Destiny: A Grape Slushie Affair
by nitefang
Summary: Rachel Berry had always been a little bit psychic. Noah Puckerman had visions. Someone up there was trying to send some pretty obvious messages.
1. The Echoes

**Thursday, February 14, 2013.  
9:06am.**

**For Ale.  
Love.**

* * *

**1  
**_**The Echoes**_

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a squirrel. Amidst a hostile world of pain, this squirrel lived in a town where differences would one day flow through each other, harmonizing into a beautiful song that would bind people together.

The squirrel itself possessed no such beauty. Honestly, it was an ugly, terrifying little creature that took pride in its bald patches and scraggly, rabies-infested tail. Shunned by the squirrel population, it was most often found alone. However, one spring day, its madness finally drove it to incinerate the Laws of Squirreldom. It pattered across the sidewalk and clambered up the leg of a park bench to sit a foot away from a little girl in a cream dress with a purple sash around her waist.

The stare-down that ensued (fearful on the little girl's part and menacing on the squirrel's) ended when the filthy little bastard vaulted onto her head and began gnawing on her white carnation hair clip. The unholy scream that rang out had her two fathers sprinting full-tilt, but they were still too far to help. However, they _were_ close enough to see it all unfold. A branch whipped out and whacked the animal off the bench in an explosion of leaves. It scampered off, carnation hair clip locked between its decayed, misaligned teeth.

The little girl tore her eyes away from the escaping squirrel to turn back and follow the length of the branch until she reached the arm of a little boy with big, bright hazel eyes and a Mohawk. Usually, she would've balked at his attire, his stance, his weapon, the general air of violence. He was more of a pint-sized, heroic Navajo in Osh-Kosh than a knight in gleaming armor.

Regardless.

Her little heart was doing the bunny-hop.

"Honey! Honey, are you okay?!" her dad screeched, stumbling to a stop on his knees in front of his daughter. He smoothed her hair and frantically checked for scratches.

"What happened?!" her daddy demanded worriedly, pushing his husband away and hauling the little girl into his arms.

"I-I-It was a squirrel," the little girl explained, squirming in his grip. "I'm okay, though, Daddy. Please let me down."

Her daddy frowned, but when he spotted the little boy still wielding the branch like a baseball bat, he stifled a smile and let her down.

"You okay?" the little boy asked, lowering the branch and tossing it over his shoulder.

The little girl, now back on solid ground, approached her savior and nodded. "Yes. Thank you for helping me."

"I hate squirrels," he said by means of an explanation.

"I liked them," she said, "up until today. I'm Rachel."

He held out his hand, and she glanced down, smiled, and slipped her hand into his. He squeezed. "I'm Puck."

* * *

"_Puck_," she groaned, long and deep, as he tongued her earlobe and hoisted her up. Once secured against his chest, legs locked around his waist, he walked them to his couch and collapsed onto it. She giggled and scraped her nails through his closely-shaved hair, straddling his lap as she sucked on his lower lip and worked on peeling off his leather jacket.

"Mmm, baby," she hummed against his lips.

Puck leaned forward so she could pull the jacket off, but when he pulled one arm out, she elbowed something on his side table. The smash slapped him out of the haze long enough for Nana Connie's face to register through the broken shards of the picture frame.

"Whoops," Allie said, completely unapologetic. She smiled in mock-guilt and leaned forward to nip his jaw. "We'll find Grandma a new frame later."

Puck grinned, and pushed the face of his grandmother out of his mind as he twisted his head to kiss Allie's lips again. No one should ever be thinking of their grandmother at a time like that. He palmed her thighs and slid his hands upward to grip the hem of her red sequined dress.

"Off, off, _off_," she panted. "Take it _off_."

He was more than happy to comply. Slipping the dress up from her hips and then higher, the flash of the sequins in the dim light of his apartment made something twinge in the back of his mind.

_Cool metal wire in his hands, his foggy breath clouding in front of his nose. He looked down at his own spare football helmet and the big caramel-brown eyes that stared up at him with this wild, manic glint he'd come to associate with Broadway and solos._

_ He swallowed the small pinprick of worry about finding her teensy little body mangled by some thousand-pound linebacker and asked, "Are you ready?"_

_ Eyes flashing, she reached in through her face mask, yanked out the mouth guard, balled up her fists, and shook them in excitement. "Let's kick some ass!"_

_He watched her ass sway in the night air as she bent down into formation, one leg extended to the side like she was lunging. Crazy girl dates the goddamn quarterback for how many months and she can't even crouch right?_

_ He rolled his eyes and got into position, keeping a close eye on all the girls. God knew they were all at risk of playing hero and bolting with the rest of the guys—Rachel most of all. Chick may not be a football player, but if she had an opportunity to shine, there'd be no doubt in his mind that she'd take it. Even Lauren had a sixty-percent chance of bolting 'cause she'd rely on her wrestler skills and her…intimidating demeanor._

_ So when it was Tina who sprinted off with the fumbled ball, Puck was temporarily frozen on the field because what in the _hell_? He took off after her, but before he could really pick up speed, he passed by Rachel, gently pushed her down on the ground where she'd dropped, and said, "Stay."_

_ When Mike made sure Tina was alive and kicking, Puck glanced back to see Rachel was still flat on the ground. He jogged over and helped her up, ignoring the way she brushed herself off like a princess._

_ "Is Tina okay?" she asked, peering over his shoulder._

_ "She's fine," Puck answered, glancing back over his shoulder and watching Mike help up his girlfriend. "Really shook up, but she's good. But this is it, woman. No more."_

_ "What?!"_

_ "All of you—no, just no. Especially you. Our nerves can't take the stress of worrying about you guys getting squished, okay?" Puck insisted. "Go sit on the bench. We can…we can take it from here."_

_ Rachel nodded and took a few deep breaths. "Okay."_

_ And then it kinda hit him. While he was just, uh, _slightly_ nervous about her being in the game, this chick was actually scared shitless. She was the one against playing such painful and violent contact sports, and she up and fucking volunteered for it._

_ So he pushed her in the direction of the benches, gesturing for Lauren to follow. If that feeble little pacifist could walk onto this field in spite of the fucking creepers and big-ass fuckwits standing out here, then his pansy-ass teammates could ball up and sing one goddamn song._

"Puck! Puck, hey!"

Puck blinked and focused back on Allie, who was still on his lap and shaking his shoulders. But "focus" was kind of a loose term since everything was swaying and his dinner was T-minus five seconds from blast off. Not even her boobs could settle him. His stomach lurched and he nearly lost it right there.

"Are you okay?" she asked, sounding more irritated than worried.

"No, no, sorry," Puck said, trying to hold it together and patting her hip. "I feel kind of nauseous."

"_What_?"

"I. Need. To. Throw. Up," Puck enunciated. He pushed her off his lap and booked it to the bathroom.

"Was it the dinner?" she called.

Puck slammed the bathroom door and braced himself over the toilet, but the swishing of his insides stopped as soon as the door shut. He clamped his eyes shut and took exactly nine deep breaths—in and out, in and out. (This was definitely not the in-and-out process he thought he'd be doing earlier.)

"Puck?" _Knock, knock, knock._ "Baby, you okay in there?"

He blinked and saw stars for a few seconds before hunching over and forcing the toilet to host his reunion with the fajitas he had for dinner.

"Oh, ew," he heard Allie mutter. And then: "Um, I think I'd better just head out, okay? I don't want to, uh, be here if I do wind up having the same bug. I wanna throw up in the privacy of my own…bathroom, you know?"

He didn't respond; he just retched some more.

She made a little gagging noise. "Okay, bye."

It took a minute for her to get her stuff together, but soon enough, his front door was slamming shut and the nausea was abating. He rinsed his mouth, brushed his teeth, and gargled Listerine 'cause he absolutely fucking hated the taste of vomit. Hated doing it, hated tasting it, hated smelling it, hated seeing it in real life. It was gross.

He slowly walked out of the bathroom and made his way back onto his couch. He sat down—_nope_. He lay down, closing his eyes and letting the smooth leather cool his face. The position, though, had him at the perfect angle to see the broken glass of Nana Connie's picture frame again.

He groaned and reached over, brushing the shards aside and picking up the worn photo. There she was, wearing a ginormous straw hat that he had decorated with a bunch of huge-ass, fake-ass, _dumb_-ass flowers in some kindergarten arts 'n crafts class a long time ago. She was gardening, of course. She hated gardening, but she loved her herbs, so she sucked it up and sweated and weeded out in her yard. Oftentimes, he'd be forced to help her, and for five minutes, he'd bitch about it, but eventually he'd get into it just 'cause he was doing it with Nana. That was usually when her grins came out—those smug, mischievous little grins that his ma said he inherited straight from her. That was what was on the picture—that trademark grin.

And then he nearly slapped himself out of sheer embarrassment.

From the day a little boy in a green dinosaur shirt and jeans saved a little girl with a purple sash around her cream dress from a psychotic squirrel, all Constance "Connie" Puckerman could see were little great-grandbabies with curly dark hair and laughter in their warm brown eyes, singing songs from _The Sound of Music_ and _Hello, Dolly!_ in her living room. Apart from that first incident, however, Puck and Rachel weren't on the same wavelength, let alone Nana Connie's.

He got chocolate on her dress and she nearly tore his ear off.

But Nana Connie was relentless. She organized play dates (emphasis on the "date"), gave Puck guitar and piano lessons (so they could practice making sweet music with each other), bought Rachel those Cabbage Patch babies (so she could "practice"), and was the unofficial manager for the Rachel and Puck duo—scheduling performances at every Jewish gathering. From that fateful first day at temple to the cold February day in Puck's sophomore year of college when the spry old lady finally fell asleep and never woke up again, Connie Puckerman was dead-set on having Rachel become part of the family.

Which was why it made sense that Puck would suddenly zone out and think of _Rachel Berry_, of all people, as he was with another girl. Frickin' Nana Connie—guilt-tripping him even from the grave.

* * *

"Puck?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you gonna do about hi—?"

Puck rolled his eyes and turned back to the ledger he'd been using to track his lessons before he'd gotten distracted thinking about Rachel _fucking_ Berry for the eightieth time in the three days since that bizarre…_episode._ "Don't look at him."

"But he's been—"

"Ignore him."

"I think he's cry—"

"He's faking it. Either pinched or poked himself in the eye or something. Ignore him."

"But he's been there for, like, the last fiftee—"

Puck looked up from his ledger and leveled Jo with a dark look. _"Ignore him."_

The blonde twelve-year old's mouth immediately snapped shut, and she went back to packing her guitar and sheet music.

"S'gonna take a _lot_ of Windex to get those smears off the glass, by the way," Jo pointed out matter-of-factly.

Puck snorted. "Well, good thing it's all on _his_ side of the door then, huh?"

"He reminds me of a puppy when he looks like that," Jo mused, zipping up her bag.

"Except puppy dogs don't generally have salmon lips."

"Salmon don't have really great abs either."

Puck's head snapped up. "Missy, you get your butt outta here now. You got no business checking out a guy that's _actually_ twice your age. Go on. Your dad just pulled up."

Jo huffed and rolled her eyes before slinging her bag over her shoulder and grabbing her guitar case. "Fine. You're just getting rid of me so you can make out with him after I leave."

Puck's glare darkened, and he chucked his pen at her, clipping her ear and cutting off her giggles. "Out! 'Fore I tell your daddy how you're really getting the hang of that Robin Thicke song you wanted to practice and exactly _who_ you're practicing it for!"

Her chin rose defiantly. "_Dean_ is a good guy. I have nothing to be ashamed of."

"He's eight years older than you!"

"Love knows no bounds," she countered, nose in the air.

"Your dad's _rage_ will know no bounds," Puck shot back. "Out, Jo, before I crack your guitar on your ass!"

Jo blanched. "I'm going!" She darted out the door, the bell jingling above her.

"Come on, Puck!" came the muffled plea through the door—the only weakness in the otherwise soundproof wall Puck insisted on installing as soon as Sam Evans decided it'd be a fun idea to open up his own café/comic book store right next to him. "I'm hungry, dude, let's go!"

Puck locked the door behind Jo, waving goodbye through the glass with the fakest smile he'd put on all day. He flipped the "open" sign and then turned and flipped the bird at Sam. "There is a fucking café behind you, Evans! Go eat your own damn food!"

"I don't have _real_ food here, man! It's just little club sandwiches that won't make it past my throat!"

"Not my problem. _You're_ the one ordering the food."

"Open the _door_, Puck," Sam whined.

Sometimes—_sometimes—_Puck wished Sam hadn't quite gotten over that whole body dysmorphic disorder. Puck had a kickass metabolism, but it couldn't keep up with Sam's. "Calm your shit, Trouty Mouth," Puck grumbled. "I'm almost done."

"Can't you just open the door?! I've been standing here for, like, half an hour!"

"Then go sit down in one of the _tables and chairs _behind you, dumbass!"

"No! 'Cause if I sit down, people will see me through the windows. I've already closed for the night, but you_ know_ how some of my more… _zealous_ customers are gonna insist on being let in if they see me here. Then I'll _never_ get home!"

Puck stowed his ledger and locked the drawers and register before shrugging on his jacket and grabbing his keys. He slowly walked over to the connecting door, glaring at Sam the whole time. He had his hand over the handle and was just about to pull it open when—

_ Puck shouldered past the closing auditorium doors. "Hey," he said, reaching out to grab her arm. "Wait."_

_ "What do you want, Noah?" she said through a frustrated sigh, turning around to face him. "Are you going to chew me out like everyone else? Thank you for sticking up for me—I know it must've taken a lot out of you to merely say you _kinda liked me_. But now—oh, _now_ you have to supplement it with some sort of insult to make sure my head doesn't swell too much! What are you going to say? I shouldn't have done this? I shouldn't have kissed you to get back at Finn for not telling me about Santana? For lying to me? For forgiving Quinn the egregious transgressions she did against him but breaking my heart when I actually confessed and didn't sin as horribly? I shouldn't have gone ahead and confessed what I did? I shouldn't be picking fights with—" _

_ "Rachel, Jesus Christ, shut up, I'm not gonna tell you that," Puck snapped, finally cutting her off and grabbing her shoulders and shaking her a little. _

_ "Then _what_?!" she cried, the corners of her lips turning down no matter how hard she tried to stop it from happening. "I-I-I should be happy that we won regardless of whatever drama I caused? I should—"_

_ "You should shut up," Puck said flatly, pulling a small packet of tissues he'd filched from the dressing room and handing it to her. "I was going to ask if you were okay—don't flip your shit on me now, Berry."_

_ She took the tissues but didn't look like she was about to use it. "Well, obviously, I'm _not_ okay, Puckerman. That's why I'm leaving early. I don't want victory doughnuts or drinks or whatever—I just…I just want to go home."_

_ "Then… Then I'll take you home," he said. "I took my truck 'cause I had to drop my ma off. 'S why I didn't take the bus with you guys."_

_ She frowned and glanced back at the doors. "W-What about Lauren?"_

_ "Lauren's living it up in there—first show choir victory and all. She'll be fine without me," he said. He tucked her arm in the crook of his elbow and led her out of the building. "Come on. Let's go home."_

_ "Why are you doing this?" she asked, her grip on his arm tightening as her voice got thicker._

_ "'Cause you know I hate seeing you cry," he answered. "So please, for the love of God, don't. You waste enough tears on them—on _us_. We're not worth it."_

"Whoa, dude, you okay?"

Jesus, these little zone-outs were getting more vivid. Puck blinked and shook his head of the weird-ghost-sensation of her hand on his arm. What was _actually_ on his arm wasn't any better. He brushed off Sam's hands from his shoulders and pushed the blonde away. "Personal space, Evans. We talked about this before."

But not even a second later, the hands were back on his shoulders. "Potentially life-threatening situations throw that kind of agreement out the window. You just, like, _froze_, dude. Like you were having a stroke or something. You went pale and looked like you were about to keel over on the spot."

Puck scowled, slapping Sam's hands off again. "It's 'cause of your cologne, jackass," he said, deflecting.

"Why? You swooning?"

"I'm _dying_ 'cause your noxious stench is killing all my brain cells."

"Is this your way of asking me to give you the kiss of life?"

"This is my way of telling you that you smell like a douchebag."

"You would know, right? It's the smell you lived with for a good portion of your life."

"'Cause I had the reputation to supplement it. You just smell like a poser."

"I think it's one of those situations where talking the talk is a whole lot better than walking the walk."

"That's the thing though. You still can't talk the talk either 'cause those rancid fumes of yours would offend the actual douchebags."

"That's why you're so defensive?"

"That's why I'm about to keel over—I ain't going down without a fight, especially if it's against your goddamn cologne, Evans."

"People die for love, I totally get it. You don't have to fight it."

"I see it now, Trouty. Gotta get rid of that fish smell. It's cool. I totally understand."

"I hate you."

"This is what you get for forcing me to come with you. As if we don't spend enough time near each other these days. _Shit_."

* * *

Two days later, they were supposed to be going out to a club or something—guy's night out, 'cause Sam kept nagging him that he was overworked. So White Chocolate brought someone else into the mix to keep things interesting. At first, Puck thought it was gonna be a chick, and Sam was gonna get him smashed as all fuck to have a threesome. If it was with two girls, yes, Puck would gladly volunteer, but if it was with another guy and a girl, just no.

So when it was Mike Chang who pulled up to the curb, Puck punched Sam in the shoulder.

"Ain't no way I am having a threesome with you two!"

"We're not having a threesome!" Sam cried.

"What?! A threesome?! Evans, I don't know what you've been smoking, but that is not happening!" Mike roared. "Even if you two had sex change operations and turned out to be the hottest chicks on the face of the earth—_no_!"

Puck paused. "Well…now I'm offended."

"Now that I think about it, me too," Sam agreed, crossing his arms over his chest. "You didn't have to take it that far."

"I'll take it as far as I want considering this is _my car_ you two wanna use," Mike said.

Puck pointed at Sam. "He started it." Then he hopped into the Camaro and completely checked out of any conversation from thereon. It wasn't until they were probably halfway to wherever it was they were going that Puck's lack of sleep caught up with him. He slumped deeper into the seat and sighed.

"I mean, _look at him_! Saying he looks like death warmed over is saying Finn is just a _little bit_ slow!"

"That's mean, dude."

"Finn was the one who called Brit stupid but cheated off her test—you're the one who told me that, remember?"

"No, that's mean to Death. You're gonna build up some bad juju with the ol' Pale Horseman."

"I thought you were Buddhist."

"Racist!"

"That's not racist! I saw one of those Buddha statues at your parents' house last time we visited!"

"My grandmother has a figurine of a cat—does that mean she worships glittery porcelain cats too?"

"The Egyptians did!"

"The Egyptians had a complex religion. Cats weren't the central idea!"

"They had some complex burial rituals too. Priests would recite spells to reanimate the mummy so the poor guy could breathe and talk in the afterlife."

"You're supposed to be the anthropology nerd—that was _symbolic_, Sam!"

"Still applicable to Puck!"

Mike Chang glanced at the man in question, hunched in the shotgun seat with a pounding headache. "Did you hear that? You look like a reanimated _corpse_."

"Practically a zombie, dude," Sam added, his head poking out from between the two front seats.

Trouty Mouth's lips were directly in line with Puck's elbow, but Puck just didn't have the energy anymore. It'd been a week since that first godforsaken flashback/hallucination/episode/symptom-of-his-yet-to-be-diagnosed-brain-tumor, and he was just stressed the fuck out. He thought it was him zoning out and just remembering a really vivid memory, but at this point, he was sure he was going into a full-scale psychotic breakdown.

The prospect of having another episode was hanging over his head all the damn time, and he wound up wondering if any sort of innocuous object had some sort of association with Rachel Berry. Because if a fucking red dress and a doorknob could have him temporarily blacking out of reality, he may as well go ahead and lock himself in a padded room.

Hell, if he did _that_, he might wind up with a flashback about pillows. And the Lord God knew there were a _lot_ of memories of Rachel Berry he could associate with pillows.

"Seriously, Puck," Mike said, signaling to merge into the left lane. "What's up?"

"Well,_ him_, for one thing," Sam pointed out. "I saw his list of things to do the other day when I was using his computer—guy's been staying up to unholy hours, clearing through the repairs and orders."

"That's obvious enough. His raccoon eyes are worse than Santana's whenever she forgot to take her eye makeup off at night," Mike reminded them with a small shudder. "What's going on with you, Puckerman? I haven't seen you like this since you made that little girl cry back when you were working the Chinese Thea—"

"SHUT UP, CHANG!" Puck growled.

"FINALLY!" Mike and Sam chorused.

"What's crawled up your nose and squatted in your skull?" Sam sighed, patting Puck's head. "You've been out of it for the past couple of days; it's getting kinda scary, dude."

Puck scrubbed his hands up and down his face. "Just having some issues—nothing to worry about."

"Horseshit."

"Chang!" Sam shrieked, ever the good Christian boy (who once moonlighted as a stripper…). "What would your mother say?!"

"If she heard that and saw Puck? The exact same thing—only in Cantonese."

Puck sighed. How the hell was he supposed to get out of this one without looking like he needed therapy or a CAT scan? "Look, I'm just…not having a good week, okay?"

Something seemed to dawn on his friends' faces because Sam leaned back, subdued, and Mike nodded understandingly, his anxious grip on the steering wheel relaxing.

"Oh, yeah," Mike said sadly. "It's March."

And then Puck nearly punched the car window. THAT EXPLAINED IT. Okay, now it _all _made fucking sense. It was March. Three day's time would mean the seventh anniversary of Nana Connie's death. But he kept his mouth shut and didn't tell his friends about the correlation between March 22nd and his random memory attacks of Rachel. No CAT scans, remember? Regardless of how believable it was that his grandma was haunting him for not getting into Rachel Berry's pants.

So the three of them lapsed into a sad silence, Mike and Sam having been on the receiving end of many of Nana Connie's lectures, meals, and hugs. The silence was too much space for the sad memories to fill, so Mike did what any normal dude would do when confronted with a quiet like that: he turned on the radio.

Puck respected his friend; he really did. Mike was a kickass dancer on top of being second in their graduating class. There were some things that neither of them mentioned in casual conversation 'cause they respected each other too much (Chinese Theater for Puck, L'Oreal for Sam, and Cheerios for Mike), and then there were the things that _had_ to be commented on. And he was just about to say something about Mike' s hillbilly Asian tendencies and the fact that the radio was already programmed to the country station when he heard the very first chord of a painfully familiar song. He went rigid.

_"No."_

_ "For crying out _loud_, Noah! We've been at this for three hours!"_

_ "Don't tell me you're at the end of your mile-long list of Broadway show tunes."_

_ Rachel opened her mouth to respond and then promptly shut it again. She decided to smack the stack of sheet music onto her desk and slump into her computer chair instead. "That's beside the point! No matter what song I offer, you turn it down!"_

_ Puck shrugged and folded his arms behind his head as he lay sprawled out on Rachel's bed. "You're the one that asked for my help, sweetheart."_

_ "Yes, your help _singing a song_, not _choosing it._"_

_ "Well, that falls under the category of singing it, don't you think? I mean, how am I supposed to kick a song's ass if it's a bad song to begin with?"_

_ She shot him a dirty look. "That makes no sense."_

_ "_You_ make no sense," he shot back wittily, smirking when Rachel huffed in frustration again._

_ She stared—no, sorry,_ glared_—at him for a solid minute, and he smirked all the while. She finally closed her eyes as if internally preparing herself for something. When she finally reopened them, she took a couple of breaths before straightening her back, flipping her hair over her shoulder, and then hopping up onto her feet. "I need a break," she announced, pushing optimism into her tone hard enough to try and convince herself of it. "Would you like something to drink?"_

_ "Bourbon?"_

_ "Fruit punch, it is."_

_ She flounced out of her room, leaving Puck to look around. Not much had changed since the year before. The sheets weren't quite as frilly. It was more of a "classic" type of girly instead of the "frilly" kind. He could deal. There were the framed playbills, the white _Phantom of the Opera_ mask, and that useless pink electric guitar she never played. Then there were the pictures of the gleeks—with the trophy from Sectionals, before the Regional performance, and then a candid of them just sitting and fooling around in the choir room. Those three were positioned at the top of a collage of pictures tacked to a cork board. He should've been worried about his subconscious or something 'cause out of every other picture, the one he zeroed in on was an old Polaroid-thing of when he and Rachel were, like, eight. They were sitting side by side on a bench, Rachel strumming the guitar and Puck fingering the chords. Both of their mouths were open as they sung whatever song Rachel had forced him into singing, but the upturned corners of his mouth…_

_ "Which picture are you looking at?" Rachel asked when she came back and found Puck studying her collage._

_ "Why'd you bitch about me singing a solo?"_

_ A little thrown off by his random question, Rachel frowned and set the two glasses of fruit punch on a couple of coasters on her desk. "What—"_

_ "When you and I were making out last year, you stopped and started saying stuff about how I needed to sing a solo to be worthy of your high-maintenance ass or something," he reminded her, still frowning at the picture. "You forced me to sing a _gazillion_ solos when we were little. Why'd you make a big deal about it in glee when you already knew I could do it?"_

_ Rachel walked over, spotted the picture he was looking at, and then pulled it off the board. She took his hand and led him to her bed where they sat down on the edge._

_ "I knew you could do it," she said, looking down at the picture._

_ He frowned. "So why'd you make a big thing out of it?"_

_ "Because the gleeks didn't know it."_

_ He turned to study her expression, their faces as close as it had been that night she convinced him to do that God-awful "Run, Joey, Run" horseshit. But this time, it wasn't a kiss he was looking for. When she met his gaze , she gave him a small smile._

_ He figured it was a loaded answer. Singing "Sweet Caroline" had been, like, a formal initiation into the club. He went from prop to contender. He thought he'd been trying to prove himself to Rachel. Turns out, she made him prove himself to the nonbelievers of his badassness._

_ "No Broadway songs, Berry," he said, breaking the three-minute silence they'd fallen into. "No Celine Dion or whatever either. You gotta learn to expand your horizons."_

_ "I'm not doing death metal."_

_ Puck snorted. "I ain't doing that to my ears either."_

_ She sighed in defeat, still fingering the picture. "What do you have in mind then?"_

_ Puck reached over to the other side of the bed for his guitar and positioned it on his lap. "I heard this song the other day when I was hanging out with Chang…"_

"For crying out loud, Sam! Just call nine-one-one!"

Puck's eyes snapped open, and—hand to God—Mike and Sam yelped in surprise.

"Puckerman, for God's sake! Did you finally get diagnosed with a brain tumor or something?!" Mike screeched.

He'd pulled over on the side of the road and had been about to bolt out of the car to drag Puck out and perform CPR or something. Now two fingers were on Puck's carotid artery.

"You looked like you had an aneurism or a stroke or, like, a brain hemorrhage, Puck," Sam growled, face pale and strained. "You scared the ever-loving _shit_ out of us."

"Tell us what the _fuck_ is going on right now, or so help me God, I am throwing you into the nearest hospital and ordering a _battery_ of tests from MRI's to a fucking pap smear! I should probably do that regardless!" Mike barked angrily.

Puck shifted in his seat, rubbing his temples. This was getting _way _out of hand.

"PUCK!"

"Calm your herpes, Chang!" Puck snapped.

"THEN ANSWER THE GODDAMN QUESTION!"

"I'm just not feeling well, all right?!"

"You _do_ have a brain tumor!" Sam shrieked an unholy pitch. _That's_ how he'd managed to pull off Bruno Mars.

"No, numbnuts! The flu!" Puck countered, thinking fast. "My meds are screwing with my brain. I just zone out a lot. I'm tired, okay?"

"If this is the flu, Puck, you've got a whole new strain that'll probably ring in the zombie pandemic!"

"YOU NEED THE HOSPITAL—NO, SHUT UP! MIKE, DRIVE!" Sam screamed.

* * *

The bells of the door of 7-11 jingled as Puck walked in. He nodded at Trey the Stoner Cashier before taking a deep breath and walking forward into the store. It had taken him a long-ass fucking time to get Mike and Sam off his back about his whole…_issue_. Convincing them he'd survive the night was like convincing Fox Mulder and Dean Winchester that the supernatural didn't exist. But once he finally did it, he collapsed on his couch and didn't leave the apartment for another three days.

Which meant today was March 22nd. Today was the anniversary of his grandmother's death, and he just kind of wanted to crawl under his bed with his comforter and never leave.

Yeah, bitches. He wanted to be a mole.

But he wasn't going to be a mole.

He wasn't going to be a mole because his nana would probably kick his ass as soon as he died, and he really didn't want that to happen.

So instead of going out and getting smashed or visiting his grandmother's grave in Ohio, or even _eating a meal_ like any other normal person, he went to fucking 7-11.

Puck stopped in front of the slushy machine—grape, of course.

Why the fuck was he doing that?

'Cause he was just a morbidly curious kind of guy. When his ma told him people actually ate cockroaches in certain parts of the world, he decided to try it for himself. He nearly got his hand sawed off 'cause he went into an abandoned house and got chomped by a snake. He doused his arm in alcohol and set it on fire. He wondered if singing ability directly correlated with kissing ability; he wondered if a passionate singer and actress could be a passionate, hormonal teenager too; he wondered if she really did understand him like she always insisted she did.

So he bought that goddamn grape slushy—again—and took it home. Ain't no way was he gonna do this shit in public.

What was he doing?

He was going to induce an episode.

And while he may not have known the difference between Benedict Arnold and Eggs Benedict back then, even _he_ knew how significant slushies were between him and Rachel. This was gonna induce the mother of all zone-outs—no question.

So he sat at his dinner table, the slushy on the table in front of him. He took a deep breath and brought the cup to his lips.

_"I picked it up for you when I was buying dip. It's grape. I know that's your favorite 'cause the last time I tossed grape in your face, you licked your lips before you cleaned yourself off…"_

* * *

_Puck walked into the locker room at exactly 3:15pm. He sure as hell wasn't proud of it, but he had responsibilities. His first commitment had been the game, so he was gonna stick with it. He had a reputation to uphold._

_ "This is the right thing," Finn said, coming up beside him and patting him on the back. "This is the _best_ thing for us, dude. This is our shot at getting through high school and moving on to college and stuff."_

_ Puck wasn't really quick to agree with that considering it wasn't like the Titans were on this major winning streak that was gonna get them scouted. But he didn't say anything. He yanked open his locker and pulled out his equipment instead._

_ "Glee… Rachel, Mercedes, and them can have glee 'cause their talents would benefit them more there, you know? For guys like us—for you, me, Mike, and Matt—this is where we should be. Like…destiny."_

_ Puck paused and scowled at his shoulder pads. Destiny, his perfectly shaped ass. Finn_ would_ be the one to think siding with a shitty football team would be his destiny, and for all Puck cared at that point, it _could_ be. Fuckin' Finn._

_ Puck totally got how important a quarterback was. He'd call the shots in the game, and the other guys had to trust their QB. But just 'cause Finn was the football quarterback didn't mean he could call the shots in their actual lives too. He was sure some other asshole would appreciate it, but not him._

_ Jesus Christ._

_ He'd pretty much convinced himself that what he was doing was okay as he walked into the damn locker room, and instead of, like, _reaffirming_ his decision, Finn's shitty-ass pep talk only convinced him otherwise._

_ This was such _chickenshit_!_

_ Tanaka was such a fucking asshole, making 'em choose between football and glee 'cause of some dumbass competition he thought he was having with Schue. What the fuck?! So much for being a goddamn authority figure, that fuckwit. Fuckering fucking fucker fucking fuck—_

_ "Hey, Rutherford!" Puck called down the aisle._

_ "Yeah?" came the sullen reply._

_ "You took Sunday school, right?"_

_ "Yeah…?"_

_ "Who was that one super-wise Jew king?"_

_ "Uh, Solomon?"_

_ Puck nodded. "Yeah, that's the one."_

_ Solomon._

_ Solomon who had to deal with these two women who both tried to claim the same baby. Solomon, this badass genius, pitched the solution that if these two women couldn't decide who was gonna keep the baby, they should just split it in half. He figured the one who refused to let the baby get hurt would be its mother. And he was right._

_ This was exactly like that._

_ Tanaka was there, but instead of Schue, all he could see playing tug-of-war with his arms was Rachel. Rachel, and her big brown eyes, was just holding his hand while Tanaka had him in a choke-hold. She didn't even ask him to choose glee or choose her. She just…_

_ She just forgave him. And kissed him on the forehead. And washed slushy out his hair. And actually gave him a little head massage in the process._

_ "Hey, Puck?" Mike called._

_ "What?"_

_ "You thinking what we're thinking?"_

_ "Wait, what?" Finn asked, looking around._

_ Puck smirked. "Don't wanna be the ripped baby?"_

_ A few chuckles and then a simultaneous "yeah."_

_ Puck smiled a little and tossed his shoulder pads back into his locker. Fuck this noise. He slammed his locker door. "Let's bounce. We've got a better shot of winning with the gleeks than with these dipshits."_

_ Mike and Matt whooped, grinning like idiots, as they made their way out of the locker room. Puck turned to see Finn standing there, looking like a lost, kicked puppy._

_ "What…?"_

_ "_Maybe_ it's the right thing for you, dude," Puck said evenly, patting Finn's chest. "But the three of us don't believe much in destiny."_

_ "Puck," Finn called, grabbing Puck's shoulder. "But you don't even like glee."_

_ Puck frowned. "And you're the one who joined it first."_

_ And then Puck walked out. He was a little late, but he made it. And he may have walked in there looking eight shades of sheepish as Rachel came up to him with the most perfect and heartfelt smile he'd ever seen her make. He didn't hesitate as he turned Finn down, he didn't hesitate as he walked in, and he wouldn't hesitate in answering Rachel. _

_ He glanced at the rest of the gleeks, seeing how they were grinning at him proudly. Then he turned back to Rachel, still smiling warmly. "Bring it."_

* * *

_ "Noah… Noah, neshama…"_

Puck blearily opened his eyes and lifted his head from where it had apparently dropped onto the table. He sleepily turned to his left and legitimately fell off his seat. He could pick her out of a crowd after nothing but a glance—from her brightly colored, printed shirts to the pastel-colored pants, from the daisy earrings to the random braided lock of hair under her left ear—Puck knew this woman. Which is why she scared him so bad he nearly pissed himself.

"NANA?!" he cried, scrabbling across the floor away from… from… _"NANA?!"_

But instead of answering him like she normally would ("Don't scream in the house unless there's something evil nibbling or gnawing on you."), she started going off in some other language that may or may not have been Hebrew—don't ask him, he wasn't the expert. For all he knew, she could've been speaking in Tongues, so he decided to focus less on deciphering the babble and more on figuring out WHAT THE FUCK WAS HAPPENING. She wasn't glowing or falling apart at the limbs, so she wasn't a ghost or a zombie or something. Honestly, she looked straight-up _real_. And she looked…worried.

"Nana—Nana, I don't—I—_no me comprendo_! Like… _shit_!"

But even cussing didn't do anything. She just kept going. He just gawped at her until she finally stopped jabbering and walked over to him. She bent down and rested her hand on his cheek, and he would swear up and down the universe that she was real. And then she finally said something that had two words he recognized: "asher" and "boog."

Unfortunately, he had no clue what they meant, only that they sounded familiar. In his currently fucked-up condition, they probably just sounded like words he _thought_ he _might_ have recognized.

And then she was patting his cheek and saying, _"Shalom, Noah. Kol tuv."_

And then Puck woke up. Again.

His cheek was stuck to his table, and the table smelled like grape slushy. Joy. The slushy had spilled and melted. He slowly peeled himself off and sat up in the chair, just blinking and trying to get his shit together.

Two seconds later, he lost it anyway.

He scrabbled at his pocket and yanked out his phone. That CAT scan sounded like a damn good idea right then. He scrolled all the way down to the hospital contact—yes, it was programmed onto his phone 'cause being in the guitar-making business still had its dangers—and tapped on it at least four times. He held it up to his ear as he ran around his apartment trying to find his shoes.

But when the ringing stopped, he froze again. 'Cause since when did nurses answer phones sounding like they were in the middle of having sex?

"Hello?" _Pant, pant, pant._

Puck frowned and cleared his throat awkwardly. "Uh, is this Northwestern Memorial Hospital?"

"What? No—_wait_. Noah?"

WHAT THE FUCK—

"Who—what—you're not a hospital."

"No, Noah, this is Rachel Berry."

He suddenly got tunnel vision and teetered in the middle of his living room. That was… Okay, what… Hm. "You're…not a hospital."

"Are you all right?"

"No," he said evenly. "No, I'm not okay. I was calling the _goddamn hospital!_"

"OH, MY GOD! HANG UP AND CALL NINE-ONE-ONE!"

"Sh—Just shut up, crazy. I'm not, like, bleeding out or anything. Don't panic."

"Well, when you accidentally call me after God-knows-how-many years, thinking that I'm a _hospital_, I have grounds to panic!"

"Well, you _shouldn't_. Christ, _I'm_ the one with brain damage?"

"Excuse me?!"

"Are you having sex?"

"WHAT?!"

"Quit screaming in my ear, woman! I'm asking if you just finished having sex."

"Why would—no! I'm not even—why would you ask me—I just—I can't believe you!"

"Then why were you breathing so hard?"

"Because I was jogging!"

He stopped. Then he snorted. "You were jogging or _jogging_?"

There was a long pause before she sighed. "I honestly don't know how jogging could be a euphemism for anything."

He carefully walked toward his couch, and sat down slowly, not wanting to jostle his deteriorating brain any more than necessary. "Well, considering it's like…pitch-black nighttime and you've always had this paranoid fear of stepping outside your house by yourself after nightfall, I really fucking doubt that you're _jogging_."

She huffed, and he knew she was rolling her eyes. "I have a treadmill."

Puck laughed. "Your neighbors must wanna kill you."

"I have soundproofed walls, thank you very much," she snapped primly. "And my neighbors love me. I bake them cookies every Sunday, and they come and see my shows."

"They're celeb moochers then?"

"Did you mistakenly call me only to harass me?" she sighed.

"No, I mistakenly called you 'cause I wanted to make an appointment to get a goddamn CAT scan," Puck sighed right back.

"Why do you need a CAT scan?"

"Because I'm brain damaged."

Anyone else would've been like, _Could've told you that years ago, dumbass_. But Rachel Berry went, "Noah, are you sure? I mean, we all think we're brain damaged at some point, but please tell me if you're serious. Tell me straightaway; you can't joke about things like this."

He genuinely debated between telling her the truth and harassing her some more. Eh. "What about things like what exercising at night says about you?"

"What?"

"You know, Berry."

"No, Puckerman, I don't."

"You're exercising at night 'cause you don't have anyone to _exercise with_ instead. I'm only a couple states away, Rach. You can always fly me over if you want the company."

She chuckled quietly. "Noah, you haven't changed at all."

"How much you wanna bet my guns and my ass are sexier than before?"

"Letch."

"You love it."

"I'm going to hang up now."

"No, you won't."

"Oh, really? And you know this how?"

"'Cause you miss me."

"How did you deduce that?"

"We haven't talked in almost a decade. We went from never being able to get away from each other to total radio silence. You miss me. You haven't had your daily dose of Vitamin Puck."

"I've been perfectly fine for the last nine years, Noah. I think I can survive without it."

"You think that 'cause you had a drastic environment change. If you had the Puckerman supplement up there, you'd see that your life as it is now would totally pale in comparison."

"And you're absolutely sure of this?"

He leaned back and threw one arm over the back of the couch, settling in for a conversation that would help him catch up to his quota of harassing Rachel Berry. "Sure as death."

"Don't be so morbid."

"It's the truth. You know what else is the truth?"

"What?"

"You totally miss me now, don't you?"

"Seriously? We're back to this?"

"You miss me 'cause you haven't hung up or made any excuses to hang up or _nothing_."

"Maybe I'm going to catch up with you this once and leave it at that?"

"You won't."

"Why?"

"'Cause you're gonna call me back in a couple of days wondering if I really did need a CAT scan or if this was just a ploy to talk to you."

"And how do you know this?"

He smiled. "'Cause I know you."

"Well, if you're going to play that card, I know for a fact that you're going to call me again soon."

"Huh—never really thought of doing that."

"Yes, you did. Because out of every other girl in your contacts list, you accidentally call _me._ If I had been any other girl, you would've mindlessly flirted and called me _babe. _Then you would've made an excuse—something about bar-hopping or clubs or hanging out with the boys—so as to make yourself seem available by being unavailable, ensuring future attention from whomever you'd be talking to. But you're not going to do that with me."

"Listen, babe, I gotta go bar-hopping with the boys. What'chu say we pick this up another time?"

"You're not going to do that with me because you never call me 'babe.' You call me 'baby,' and you wouldn't try to blow me off because you have too much fun teasing me. And you're going to call me back tomorrow and ask if I'm going to exercise again. You know why?"

He couldn't stop his smile from turning into a grin. "Why?"

"Because apparently, Noah Puckerman, you miss me too."

* * *

**Special thanks go to the painfully talented Silke, who made (or is still in the process of making, actually) the graphic for this fic. Y'all should see some of the shit she can do. It's wizardry. I'm convinced she went to Hogwarts. She doesn't use Photoshop. She uses her wand.**


	2. The Call

**Thursday, February 14, 2013.  
4:29pm.**

**For Belle.  
Live.**

* * *

**2  
**_**The Call**_

* * *

"You're lying."

"I am _not_."

"You are _fucking_ lying to me right now."

"When have I _ever_ lied to you?!" Rachel cried indignantly.

Puck scoffed. "I guess now's a good time to start."

"Noah, I am _not_ lying—seriously! Blaine and Kurt adopted a baby from the Philippines," she said. "He's about sixteen months already, and he's absolutely ador—"

"Yeah, yeah, he's cute, but I'm still stuck on the _name_—you've gotta be shitting me about that."

Rachel huffed, and he could _hear_ her rolling her eyes and throwing her head back in frustration.

"'Cause _seriously_, baby. I know Kurt would never, in a million fucking years, name his first child _Andrew Anderson_," Puck said. "Unless he was drunk. Was he drunk?"

"No, Kurt was sober—"

"Then Blaine threatened him by withholding goodies, didn't he? That conniving little hobbit."

"Blaine did no such thing!" she snapped. "They named the baby after a friend of theirs that helped push the adoption through. For God's sake, Noah, you idiot."

Puck chortled and forked up the last of the apple pie. "Can you _blame_ me though? Jesus Christ, _Andy Anderson. _Kid's gonna get flak for that when he gets to school."

"That's mean."

"That's the _truth_," Puck said simply. "Kids are always either the sweetest or meanest humans. Our old group should be the resident experts on that, remember? Does he have a middle name?"

"True," Rachel agreed. "And it's Joseph. Andrew Joseph Anderson."

"_AJ_ then," Puck said flatly, tossing his fork into the sink and throwing out the pie container.

"Fine! What would _you _name your kids?" she asked testily.

He'd totally planned it out over a decade ago—during a _Smallville_ marathon and a long-winded sermon at JCC. "Jonathan and Isaiah."

Her five-second pause told him enough to know she remembered too. But then she tried to salvage herself by maintaining her snooty tone. "And you're so confident that you'd have two boys? You've already had one girl, Noah."

"Well, then knowing who my wife would be, I'm pretty sure we'd name her after a song."

"_Sharona_? _Valerie_?"

"Christ, Berry, who do you think I'll be married to?"

"_Sarah_? God forbid—_Billie Jean_? Or…"

He let her list off as many songs named after women for a couple minutes until he finally went, "Woman. Shut up."

"Okay, then what would you and your _unfortunate_ wife name her?"

He smiled, knowing his answer would send her into a tailspin. "_Caroline._" He heard her flop down somewhere in a huff, and they sat together for a couple minutes. Then he decided to save her. "So I told you about Tom, right?"

"Yes, he's your business partner who deals with the financial and managerial side of Jericho Sound," she recited proudly. She still wasn't over the fact that he was the co-owner of a major company already. He was kind of offended. He _said_ that he had star potential—he hadn't been kidding about that shit, you know. "Why? Is everything all right? I heard you cracked the top ten list of sound and material quality. Your guitars especially are selling like it's the music apocalypse."

Okay, he wasn't offended anymore. He was just really fucking smug. "Yeah, he's fine—charming the pants off those investors in L.A. Apparently, we're in real huge demand right now."

"I hear a 'but' somewhere there."

Puck walked out of his kitchen and to the living room, where he flopped down onto the couch. "He gave me some news that Sam and Mike aren't gonna be real happy about."

"What? Why?"

"I'm moving. Or I _might _be. I've already established the company here in Chicago well enough, so now he's tossing me somewhere else."

"But what about your guitar store?"

Puck rubbed the top of his closely-shaved head and sighed. "We kept the stores small to make sure we're still intimate with the customers and the ones taking lessons, but we're still technically _branches_. Eric Johnson will take over the Chicago branch—he's the one you nearly gave a heart attack to when you decided to call me in the middle of work."

"Don't berate me for your employee's good taste. So where will you be going?"

"It's not set yet. We've got stores opening in Austin, Orlando, Montgomery, and, like, six other cities. I could be going to any one of those," Puck answered casually. As if it wasn't a really big fucking deal. But he was a _Puckerman_, remember? He was calm; he was cool.

"Noah! That's spectacular! Why didn't you say anything before?!" she cried.

"I told you now, didn't I?" he said cheekily.

She legitimately _growled at him_. It was the funniest thing. "I'm going to hang up on you. There's only so much of your attitude I can take in one night."

He snorted and flicked on the TV. "You're not gonna hang up." _Supernatural_ marathon on TNT—of course.

"One of these days, Noah Puckerman," she threatened. "One of these days… Now, do I hear Sam and Dean arguing back there? I was just talking to my cast mate about that show…"

* * *

When Sam first posed the idea, Puck was like, "No."

When Sam started decorating and asked Puck to do it again, Puck was like, "Hell no."

When Sam finished decorating and putting on his costume and asked Puck to do it for the third time, Puck was like, "Holy _shitballs_, Trouty Mouth, _no_."

Ain't no _way_ he was gonna play minstrel to a bunch of cosplaying weirdos coming to Sam's mini Comic-Con event—of which the entrance to the shop was disguised in a blue police box, of which the drinks and pastries were shaped, colored, and bottled like props straight outta Harry Potter, of which the comic book shop owner was dressed as Captain America.

He was dead serious, yo.

Sam went all-out for this. His shop was bigger, and he'd already gotten two comic books series published, so he could totally afford it. But this was ridiculous.

The connection door was totally gonna be locked.

And then he saw Kristen, Cassidy, and Laura—Sam's employees—walk into the shop as Black Widow, Maria Hill, and Scarlet Witch respectively, and decided God might be okay with him helping Sam. Then a bunch of chicks danced into the shop barefoot in short, filmy dresses with flowery crowns on their heads, calling themselves nymphs, and he rethought his stance. Then came the battle-armored warrior goddesses wearing leather and metal and wielding swords, whips, and chains, and the next thing he knew, he was locking his shop's front door and was propping open the connecting door while Eric and Mike set up the instruments.

"Puck, are you _sure_ you're up for this?" Sam asked for the five-hundredth time. "I mean, I know I asked you to do it, but if you really, really don't want to or something, you can go home."

Puck blinked and nonchalantly picked up the stapler. "Evans," he said calmly. "So help me God, if you ask me that question one more time, I will shove this stapler so far up your ass you'll be burping staples for a month."

"Sam, go…use that shield as some sort of serving dish or something. Just _go away_," Mike sighed, shoving Sam back through the door.

"Chang, do not disgrace the shield!" Sam cried before immediately being engulfed by his customers who demanded to know if it was an authentic prop from the movie.

Mike turned Puck and frowned seriously. "But seriously, dude. Tell the truth. Are you okay? 'Cause one day, you were looking like a zombie, and the next morning, you were whistling _Don't Rain On My Parade_."

You'd _think_ that these two would be all relieved that he was fine, that he hadn't had any episodes for the past three days—three days that just coincidentally ended with a conversation with one Rachel Berry, but they didn't need to know that. But, no. They weren't relieved. They were on _edge_, thinking this was only the calm before the storm and he'd keel over any second.

"I'm _fine_," Puck insisted, setting the stapler back on the counter. "My meds worked."

"Horseshit, Puckerman," Mike retorted. "Don't lie to me."

Puck threw his head back and groaned. "Look, just…_trust me_, okay? I'm fine now. I swear." He appreciated the fact that they cared and shit (and took his mom seriously when she ordeered them to take care of him as if he wasn't the one watching out for their asses for _years_), but he needed this shit to _stop_. "The moment you see me zoning out again, you have full rights to drag me outta here and to the nearest hospital. But until then, Chang, could you please plug in the keyboard?"

And that was the end of it.

Well, the _verbal_ end of it.

He, Eric, Mike, and sometimes Sam would play some generic techno shit, the occasional cover song, and even string together a couple of theme songs into a nerdy medley that had people flailing about having "all the feels" and wailing about how they "just can't." But all through that, Sam kept shooting worried looks and peering over the heads of the crowd to check if Puck was still upright. Mike was his less-obvious ninja bodyguard, but subtle or not, it was a pain.

It was around 9:30pm when Wonder Woman, Lady Sif, an eight-year old Katniss Everdeen, and a very female Sam Winchester tugged him out of his store to sit at one of the tables at Sam's with his guitar and tried to use him as a human jukebox.

"Look at you," Sam teased, handing him a steaming mug. "A modern-day Orpheus if I've ever seen one."

Puck frowned, accepting the mug and setting it down on the table. "I'm not wearing an _inch_ of leather, dude."

"_Orpheus_! Not _Morpheus_! And even then, Morpheus is the god of—you know what? Forget it." He shook his head in disgust and walked away, muttering something about _uncultured swine_.

Puck just grinned and took a sip of his tea.

It was this unspoken thing between him, Sam, and Mike: tea. If there'd been one worthwhile thing they took from glee club, it was the importance of tea. (And making sure to keep their kids very, very far from show choir.) Now every time Puck and/or Sam and/or Mike spent inordinate amounts of time jamming or performing or _whatever_, one of them would make tea with honey.

So it was with the very first sip of honeyed tea that something warm settled into Puck's chest. No, nitwits, he knew he was drinking something hot and how it would feel like going down his throat, and that wasn't it.

It wasn't like a full-on episode—not like the ones he had before. It was more like a daydream than anything else. He could still see Sam, the costumed customers, and even a troll that was trying to flirt with Mike, but he wasn't really focused on them, wasn't really _seeing_ them. Instead, he was seeing something else in his mind.

_ Rachel Berry stood frozen in the middle of what looked to be the living room of her apartment, holding a phone up to her ear. Warm and bright colors were all over the place: oranges, yellows, greens, creams, and maple wood—all classy and still girly and very Rachel Berry. Barefoot with tiny red shorts and an oversize shirt that hung off one shoulder—still very Rachel Berry. What _wasn't_ quite so Rachel Berry was the random Asian baby sitting on her hip and grinning up at her._

_ Klaine baby—AJ._

_ "Y-Yes, I'm sorry. I'm still here," she choked out, blinking like she was on drugs. The baby gurgled and giggled at her, and then her face split into the biggest grin he'd seen in such a long time. "I—yes, I understand. Of course. Of course. Of course, Yes, of course. I-I-I'm…still standing, thank goodness." She laughed and glanced down at the baby, making a funny face. "I'm holding my best friends' baby right now, so I definitely have to be upright."_

_ This wasn't a memory. It wasn't a fantasy or a hallucination-induced-by-prolonged-singing either 'cause if it was, the baby in Rachel's arms would be his. No matter how cute the little nub was, if this was a product of his imagination, AJ would definitely be less Asian and would have a Mohawk._

_ "I _promise_ I'm all right. Yes. Yes, thank you so much! I'm—I'm over the moon! Yes, thank you so much again! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"_

_ She hung up, calmly set the phone on the countertop, and then playfully tapped AJ's nose and poked him right in the chest—in the middle of his blue and red onesie that said "Daddies' Little Crooner." _

_ "Did you hear that, Andy?" she cooed, bouncing him slightly. "Huh, _AJ_?" _

_ AJ._

_ Hadn't they talked about this last—_

_ Holy…_

_ Was this…_

_ "Guess what Auntie Rachel's manager just told her? Can you guess, sweetheart? Huh? Your Auntie Rachel is going to play _Belle_ in _Beauty and the Beast_!" she squealed happily, whirling around into a complicated-looking leap/dance step and segueing into a waltz. "Wait 'til I tell your daddies! Kurt's going to faint and then demand that I rehearse lines with him as soon as possible, and Blaine is going to try and yank me into a dance that spans the floor and the furniture."_

_ Either this was some sort of premonition or vision or—_

_ "And Uncle Noah! Let's not forget Uncle Noah!"_

_ Uncle Noah in question nearly had a heart attack. Could one have a heart attack in a dreamscape/whatever-the-fuck-this-was?_

_ "He's going to curse and then say something simultaneously crude and complimenting and then incessantly flirt until I inevitably threaten to hang up to which he will respond by somehow making me laugh or diffusing the situation and then changing the subject and…"_

_ She sighed, stopped waltzing, grinned, laughed, and then twirled around the living room, spinning until AJ squealed._

_ "I'm fairly sure he's going to call soon too," she said between humming a few bars of a familiar song. "_Oh, this is the night, it's a beautiful night, and they call it bella notte."

_Goddamn, could Broadway's new Belle sing. Back in high school, Rachel sang with the emotion of her character. Now… Jesus. He was listening to an actual angel—one he distinctly remembered hearing before but then lost sometime around her Broadway immersion when she was twelve and the change in the tones of her voice. It was clean, sweet, and bell-like now. It wasn't shrill or so high that his eye would twitch. It was soft but still powerful and emotional enough to have earned and kept her spot on Broadway. Evi-_fucking_-dently since she scored _Belle_!_

_ "_Look at the skies, they have stars in their eyes, and we call it bella notte. Side by side with your loved one, you'll find enchantment here…_"_

_ She paused with a scrunched expression, and the baby laughed. If Puck had been aware enough to do it, his jaw would've dropped. Rachel Berry forgot the lyrics. She stood there for a good minute or so and just stared off, trying to remember how the song went. Then she gave up._

_ "_Da-da da da da-da-da-da, da-da-da da da da-da, oh, this is the night, my lyrics are not right..." _And she grinned again as she whirled around gracefully, her hair flying around._ _"_On this lovely bella notte._"_

Puck blinked and focused back on Mike, who—now that Puck was firmly back in reality after straddling delusion and real-time—was trying his best to sidle away from the lady-troll that was progressively getting more possessive with every move Mike made.

It was almost ten—totally understandable that these weirdos were getting loopier. It was past their curfews to be out in public; it was time to retreat to the Internet.

Besides…the longer he was with them, the more they were starting to rub off on him. He was seriously inclined to start playing "Carry On My Wayward Son" as a goodbye to get them out the door. A bunch of them were actually already congregated around the Turd with Sam and saying their final goodbyes and thanks for hosting the event.

Turd.

That didn't sound right.

Tard.

Tar—_Tardis_.

Yeah, he'd been corrected enough times that night already. Shut up.

Since no one was really paying much attention to him anymore, he snuck back to his store with his guitar, his tea, and what was left of his balls, 'cause damn it to hell if those Harry Potter fanvids didn't have him tearing up and pining for his childhood of chopstick-wands. Mike also seized the opportunity to ninja away from the troll under the guise of helping Puck pack up the instruments so they could both get out quick. They said their goodbyes to Captain Trouty before heading back to their apartments—one to the safety of a no-troll-zone and the other to a phone call that was quickly becoming a nighttime ritual.

He had his phone out as he tossed his keys into the bowl and had her number dialed as he peeled off his jacket and chucked it into his room. He spent the three rings it took for her to answer the phone sprawled out on his couch again.

"Hello, Noah," she said warmly.

He smiled. "Evening, Berry." He was gonna have to ease into this with some _finesse_. He couldn't just flat-out ask her if he was having premonitions of her or something. "So whatcha doin'?" There. That was cool and suave enough, right?

"You mean you're not going to ask me what I'm wearing?" she teased. "Or what color underwear I have on?"

Puck scoffed. "Purple."

"There was a long, awkward silence as Puck tried to project his smug smirk through the phone. "How did you know that?"

"I got GPS, baby—Genital Positioning System."

"How you manage to function in polite society, Noah Puckerman, is absolutely beyond me."

"I'm a stud—a charming, witty stud. I can be just as stiff too, if you know what I mean."

She huffed. "Can't we maintain a certain amount of decency?" She sounded like a pare—_wait. _"There is a baby in the vicinity, after all. I'm watching Andy for the night."

He swallowed what felt like a wood chip but still managed to sound relatively normal. "Whatever. He's like, _one_. AJ doesn't get cuss words let alone dirty jokes. You can't use Klaine baby as an excuse for a few more years. Besides, I'm pretty sure he'd be in bed by now. Or are you such a shitty babysitter that you'd let the kid stay up all night?"

"_Anyway_," she said bracingly, obviously either trying to keep herself from yelling at him or laughing her adorable ass off. "I have news!"

"Is that the news?"

"Noah!"

"You don't gotta practice calling my name, baby. It comes out naturally in the throes of ecstasy," he said. "So what's up?" Here we go. "Did you, like, tame a beast or something? I mean, you went out with a T-Rex, so I guess that counts, right?"

She paused for a few seconds, and Puck winced, hoping it didn't hit too close for her to start thinking he was psychic or something. And then she finally spoke in her typical matter-of-fact tone, and his panic subsided. "I did not tame anything, thank you very much. Finn wasn't a beast, as…tall and sturdy as he might have been," she said. "If you think about it, the beast I actually tamed was you."

He could actually feel his internal organs spasm. Was that weird? Was he exhibiting signs of some serious disease or something?

"I made you sing that solo, influenced your decision to choose glee over football—to be honest, Noah, I think you really mellowed out after you and I dated. Sure, you still had your… issues to work through, especially your stint in juvie, but for all intents and purposes, you were significantly nicer to us gleeks and even stopped throwing slushies into people's faces. You still took extreme pride and enjoyment in antagonizing Jacob Ben-Israel—"

"Holy shitballs! Jewfro!" Puck squawked. "You know he's got this gossip blog now? But he's running legit—him and his minions shockingly post the truth and not the horseshit those other ones usually throw out."

"Yes, I know. I still happen to be the primary subject," she said blandly. "Out of everything else I've said, that's all you registered? Jacob?"

Puck took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Berry—"

He could hear her shifting around uncomfortably and then: "Oh, I _know_, I'm sorry. I-It was just an observation."

Puck rolled his eyes. He was getting better at reading her from over the phone. He could mentally see her backing away, eyes dropping to the floor like some wounded rabbit.

"Rachel, shut up," he said in one breath before she could cut him off again. "You're right, okay? In a way, yeah, I guess, but you were only part of the reason, so don't take all the credit, diva. Blame some of it on glee club itself, all right?"

"Okay," she said meekly.

"So," he said. "What was that news you wanted to tell me?"

"You were partially correct," she said, trying build up the anticipation before blurting out: "I'm the new Belle!"

"On Broadway?" He feigned ignorance but then warmed into genuine pride. "That's kickass, baby! Congratulations!" See? He didn't always insert innuendo into things.

"I genuinely thought I wouldn't get the part because Edmund Mason, the director, pulled me aside and voiced all his qualms about how I could portray the character, but in the end, he said that I had an effervescent manner that would certainly stay true to the original portrayal of the movie and to Belle's character herself. He said there was something about the two of us that clicked so well, which was why he originally pulled me aside instead of simply turning me down."

"I don't know why you gotta sound so surprised," Puck said. "You were just comparing yourself to Belle, like, two minutes ago."

"No, I was putting our relationship in comparison with that of a woman taming a beast."

"Did you not see _Beauty and the Beast_? Or read any of the fairy tales or even your own script?" He chortled and stood up, moving toward his fridge. Those paninis in Sam's store were delicious and everything, but he needed his pie.

She changed the subject again. "_So_ I'm starting rehearsals in a few days. My debut performance won't actually be for another few wee—Noah, what are you humming?"

He pulled a whole new package of pie out of the fridge—pumpkin this time—and set it on the bar. "What?"

"You're humming."

"I'm not allowed to do that anymore? Pie makes me happy. I have pie in front of me. I am gonna fucking hum as I prep my pie for consumption 'cause it is turning out to be an actual _bella notte_, don't you think, Berry?"

There was nothing but silence on the other end of the phone. Puck grinned as he lifted the lid of the pie box and dug in, singing through a mouthful of cold, delicious pie. _"Side by side with your loved one, you'll find enchantment here. The night will weave its magic spell when the one you love is near. Oh, this is the night, and the heavens are right, on this lovely bella notte."_

* * *

"—and so I told him that even if he sprouted a pair of wings and flew me off the balcony of Cinderella's Castle into a moonlit, airborne waltz, there would be no way I'd go out with him," Nathalie said, twirling another forkful of fettuccini.

Puck blinked, having only heard "wings" and "waltz" and decided it wasn't worth hearing all over again. "That's awesome," he said instead. He wished he hadn't finished his food so early. That way he could've used the excuse of not talking while one's mouth was full to escape conversation.

He was gonna kill Evans for this.

Skewer him with a pole and roast him over a spitfire. And then feed his rotisserie carcass to some cannibals. He was a handsome, charitable son of a bitch, okay?

"Right? It was because I totally had this dream of this angel who _did_ dance me off a balcony of a castle. It was so romantic," Nathalie—now he was really starting to rethink that, 'cause he wasn't sure if her name was actually _Nathalie_ anymore. It might be Natasha. "I would totally get into genetic splicing because the feeling of being in the air was amazing."

He took a sip of his drink—Mountain Dew, 'cause only sugar had the capability to make his brain buzz enough to make the woman in front of him blur into inconsequentiality—and thought that he could totally be of service to her fantasies if he threw her out the window.

That would be one majestic way to end the night.

He was so goddamn _bored_ out of his _mind_.

He could listen to Rachel babble about the most inane things and still retain some semblance of understanding, but every time this chick opened her mouth, he wanted to stuff his entire plate into it.

It wasn't that her voice was annoying.

It wasn't that she talked about the most unbelievable shit under the moon.

It wasn't that she had never even asked him how he was doing or how his food was or if he wanted to kill himself sometime within the next five minutes.

She was just so fucking absorbed in her own existence that he was pretty sure he could hold a mirror in front of himself and she'd start sighing and smiling dreamily at her own reflection.

Maybe her name was Narcissa.

That would make a hell of a lot of sense.

"And the dance itself was just mindblowing. I mean, we were twirling around like _Dancing With the Stars—_literally! Remember that show? I was planning to audition to be one of the professional dancers, but…"

He nodded, probably looking too interested, and took another long pull of his drink. But instead of something cool sliding down, something warm flooded his chest again, and his already-fuzzy focus on the woman in front of him faded into the background as unmistakable humming thrummed in his mind.

_There she was again, standing her living room, waltzing around with a _very_ familiar flannel shirt. A shirt that he distinctly remembered her taking, offering to wash it 'cause she had her special detergent to really get out slushie stains. _

_ Crazy girl had kept it all this goddamn time._

_ Rachel held the end of one long sleeve, and her other gripped the shoulder as she and the dress twirled and step-ball-changed around her living room. She was smiling, her eyes at half-mast, and it tugged on his chest, the way she hummed what he'd long-since deemed _their_ song—"Sweet Caroline."_

It was a hell of a lot shorter than any other vision/dreamscape/whatever he'd had, but _damn_ if it didn't say just as much as any of those other ones.

Narcissa/Nadine/whatever-the-fuck-her-name-was could have her creepy-ass dancing angel; Puck wanted his Belle. He suddenly had the desperate need to get home.

Jumping out of nowhere, Puck began to frantically fumble for the phone in his pocket.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Narcissa/Nathalie asked, looking more offended than worried.

He held up his phone, tapping the screen and pretending to read something. His screen was nice and blank. "I gotta go!" he said. "M-Mike's in the hospital! He slipped and smashed into one of those gigantic-ass mirrors!"

"Sir—sir, are you all right?" One of the waiters rushed up worriedly.

"I gotta go," Puck cried, shooting up from his seat and wishing someone from the Oscars or Academy Awards panels could see this performance 'cause this was _gold._ "I gotta _go_!"

And he bolted out of the restaurant, leaving Narcissa/Nathalie with the bill and her own company. He sprinted to his car, threw himself inside, and peeled out of the parking space, laughing his ass off all the way back to his apartment.

The regimen was pretty much the same as the other night. He had Rachel's phone number dialed as soon as he walked through the door. Two hours into the phone call, Puck and Rachel were pretty much settled into bed, though definitely not the way he would've wished them to be.

Obviously.

He'd already bitched about his shitty-ass date, she'd told him she would have a few choice words with Sam about his ability to decide who his friends would be compatible with, and they'd just finished arguing about the effectiveness of vegan chocolate to soak up drama. (Yeah, only with Rachel Berry would he ever engage in that kind of conversation.)

Now, they were reaching that point in the night in which their conversations would start getting arbitrary, metaphorical, and generally way too…_much_ for two people who hadn't seen each other in almost a decade.

"Noah?"

"Hm?"

"Do you remember that squirrel?"

He paused, rubbing his chest and crossing one leg over the other. "Squirrel?"

"The squirrel you saved me from when we were little—the one who stole my carnation hair clip before you whacked him off my head with a tree branch?"

"For God's sake, Rach, we were five-years old. How do you remember that stuff?" he laughed.

"I don't know," she said softly. "It was just…extremely memorable to me." She was quiet for a few seconds, and Puck wasn't sure what to read from that. "But I figured you wouldn't remember. It _was_ a long time ago."

Puck rolled over and smushed his face into his pillow. Then he lifted his head and said, "It was from a bush, not a tree."

"Do you ever wonder what it would've been like if we hadn't been in love with other people when you and I went out?"

"Jesus Christ, Rachel, don't beat around the bush or anything."

"Answer me."

"No."

"W-What?"

Puck groaned and wished he was more inclined to get up 'cause he couldn't have this conversation without at least 15% alcohol in his system.

"I would'a screwed it up, Berry," he sighed. "I didn't really start growing up until, like, _senior year_—when the shit in my life really started unraveling, you know?"

"Yeah, I remember."

"If you and I had been legit, I would'a wound up hurting you somehow."

"I don't think so." She didn't even hesitate.

He scowled. "Bullshit."

"You said we were never friends when we broke up, but looking back on it now, you were more my friend during certain times than other people were. You stood up for me when Santana said everyone just pretended to like me. You helped me and Daddy with the melody for 'Get It Right.' You and Kurt staged that Barbravention. You helped me with 'Need You Now,' no questions asked and no reciprocation necessary. You mimed that heart to me and said you all loved me—"

Puck bolted upright. "Wait, _what_? How do you _remember _that?!"

"At the time, I was too busy drowning in my tears, but I had nightmares of that day for a long while because of Finn. I remember almost every detail of you all waving goodbye because I replayed it night after night when I first arrived here. I remember yours best of all because you were the only one to do that. And it made me laugh."

"You laugh in your nightmares?"

"No, you _doughnut_!" she barked, laughing and making him warm all over again. "I laughed _after_ I woke up in a cold sweat with tears in my eyes because Finn dropped me off at a train station instead of waiting for me at an altar."

"I don't know if you're being sarcastic anymore."

She sighed, but he could still hear the smile in her voice. "Oh, Noah."

"Now, _moan_ that, and this phone call's gonna get real interesting, baby."

"Noah!"

"Keep it coming, Berry."

* * *

Puck dropped from the bar, keeping his breathing deep and even. He'd stopped at 75 to peel off his sweat-soaked shirt and then jumped back up into the other half of his chin-ups. He could feel a bunch of girls' eyes on him—including a few guys too—but he steadfastly ignored them. Then he flipped, hooking his legs around the bar and dropping his hands so he was doing sit-ups.

There was only one person he wanted to impress, and the crazy girl was roughly 792 miles away. _Roughly_. 'Cause he didn't look it up or anything.

No.

He had more of a life than that. He lived in his city; she lived in her own. He was exercising; she was doing… whatever it was she did during the day.

He drop-flipped back onto the ground, nearly denting his water bottle as he furiously took a drink. Could you _furiously_ take a drink?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Either way, the adverb was pretty accurate.

He was furious.

You know why he was furious?

'Cause when you wake up to some weird-ass hallucination/vision of the present/premonition/_what-the-fuck-ever-he-was-going-fucking-bonkers_ of the object of your affections having coffee with her ex-boyfriend in Starbucks—complete with cheek kisses, affectionate hand-holding, and _remembering each other's goddamn coffee orders_—especially after staying up pretty late the night before talking about _deep, unspeakable things_, you'd be fucking furious too.

Okay, yeah, they weren't, like, _making out_ or even kissing each other's lips or dropping _I-love-you_'s, but _still!_ She sat in that Starbucks, at some teensy little table that would make every claustrophobic run screaming in terror, with _Brody_.

That pansy-ass pretty boy.

Puck thought he was gay! What the hell were they doing back together?

Not that they ever explicitly said they were back together or gave any sort of indication that they were dating again. They just sort of…sat there and drank their goddamn coffee, laughing and shit and being all chipper at that unholy hour of the morning.

That's why Puck had gone to the gym. He needed to exercise.

And not in the good way either, 'cause ever since he started talking to Rachel again, every girl he saw was just… a _painting_, something to be admired but nothing more. No one else was _real_ for him.

He winced when he officially dented his bottle.

Listen to him! He sounded like a moron!

He chugged half the bottle and tossed it back onto the floor before slumping onto the leg press machine. He wished he could leg press the weights into Brody's face, that dipshit.

It was a testament to his anger that he wasn't even thinking about how fucking _psychotic_ he'd gotten in the last month. He was having these visions without even blinking twice anymore, and up until that morning, he'd been flipping his shit wondering what in the ever-fuckering hell was going on with his jacked-up brain.

Puck spent another few minutes just fuming to himself, going through the different machines and generally looking like he wanted to break something or have something break him. It was enough to make some of the employees a little worried but not worried enough to approach him in fear of being used in either scheme of breakage. One employee though—a young kid who doubled as an advertiser for some sort of energy smoothie—wasn't as smart as the others.

He loped over, the ignorant fool, and stopped in front of Puck.

"Afternoon, sir!" the employee said. Puck glared at him so hard that the poor kid immediately paled and started shaking. "I-I-I, uh, w-was won-wondering i-i-i-i-if you—would y-you like—_smoothie_?!"

The glass tumbler of purple smoothie was shoved under Puck's nose, shaking so hard it looked like it was about to spill.

Out of sheer fear of being doused by a smoothie, Puck grabbed the tumbler and glared at the kid, who looked like he was half a second from either pissing his pants or passing out. Either option wasn't gonna be pretty, so Puck rolled his eyes and took a sip. His first thought was that he was being poisoned; his next thought was the warmth in his chest again.

_"Hi, Rach!"_

_ Puck watched Finn's face appear on Rachel's phone as she sat on her couch and felt like throwing up for so many different reasons._

_ "Finn! How are you? How is Canada?"_

_ Okay, now he was a lot less nauseous. Canada. Canada is far enough away, right?_

_ "It's good—still freezing, but really great. It'd be better if you were here, though," Finn said. "I miss you."_

_ And now he was nauseous all over again._

_ "Oh, I miss everyone too." Something inside Puck did the Soulja Boy when he heard the pointed emphasis on "everyone." Maybe there was hope after all. "Remember when Mercedes literally busted all the windows of Kurt's car?" She laughed, rested her chin in her palm and setting her elbow on the desk. "AJ still can't get your name right, by the way."_

_ Puck smirked. He'd totally rubbed off on her. She was calling her precious Andrew "AJ."_

_ Finn grimaced. "He's still calling me 'Pinn' then?"_

_ "And very happily too," Rachel said with a grin. "So why did you need to talk to me?"_

_ Finn blushed and sheepishly started to rub his neck. "Listen, I'm, uh, coming back down into the States to visit Burt and Mom and you, Kurt, Blaine, and Andy for two weeks, and I just… wanted to see if you were still open to things."_

_ Rachel frowned. "Open? What do you—" Her expression froze in place. "Finn—"_

_ Puck's eye twitched and he was vaguely aware that Smoothie Kid was slowly backing away, scared shitless by the seemingly random expressions crossing Puck's face, but more especially by the enraged look he must've been wearing._

_ "Rach, let's just...hang out," Finn said, staring at her earnestly through the screen. "We'll have dinner at Sardi's—remember?—and then take a walk through Central Park, and if things work out, we could give it another try. What do you think?"_

_ Puck watched Rachel shift uncomfortably. Her attempt to give Finn a kind smile wound up only making a painful grimace._

_ "Finn…" She sighed and started to fiddle with the hem of her shirt with her free hand. "That sounds...incredibly nice—a literal walk down memory lane—but I...I'm..."_

_ Puck stared at her, a building pressure in his chest. _Say it, baby,_ he thought. _Say it.

_"I'm spoken for already."_

_ And in that moment, Puck would've happily finished that entire smoothie and bought everyone in the gym one. But of course he wouldn't do that. He was daydreaming, not stupid._

_ "Oh," Finn said. "Th-That's cool. I should've asked first, shouldn't I? I just read on Jacob's blog that you were still—well, now I feel stupid."_

_ Rachel immediately looked sympathetic. "No, F-Finn, no, it's not your fault. It wouldn't be on Jacob's blog because we...we're not public. Technically, we're not even officially dating, but we're...we're almost there. I really, _really_ like him, and I feel like we're both in the right place to try it again. Only not _literally_ in the right place because he may or may not be nearly a thousand miles away and we've only been talking on the phone every night—" She cleared her throat. "It'd be nice to just hang out again...as _friends_, you know?"_

_ Finn nodded, looking like a beat-up puppy who was still somehow high on laughing gas. For all his fuck-ups, at least he'd grown up enough to be able to genuinely smile at Rachel. "Yeah, I think that'd be good. Besides, we're probably much farther away than you and your boyfriend, so picking back up would be a bad idea anyway."_

_ Rachel nodded. "Yeah. Maybe he can come visit, and you two can meet. I'm sure you'll get along really well."_

_ Crazy girl._

Puck blinked and focused back on the Smoothie Kid, who was standing in front of him with a hopeful grin. It was only then that Puck realized how widely he was smiling too.

"So you liked it?" Smoothie Kid asked.

Puck stood up and handed the tumbler back. "Hell no, that was some nasty-ass shit." He stood up and headed toward the lockers.

"B-But then why are you smiling?" Smoothie Kid asked, trailing after him and staring down at the tumbler in confusion.

Puck stopped and faced him. "You should be happy I didn't punch you for trying to poison me. Don't make me drop-kick you for being nosy. I gotta go home and throw up now. Fix your shitty-ass recipe and come see me again next week." Then Puck ruffled his over-gelled hair and walked off with a smile.

'Cause apparently he had an unofficial girlfriend. He was unofficially "dating" Rachel Berry.

Rachel Berry.

He grinned.

Schmoozing California boy or not, maybe Tom really _did_ know what he was doing. Puck was gonna have to make some calls.

* * *

"You don't like it?"

Puck smirked 'cause it was _so _obvious she was trying to keep her cool. She'd spent the last fifteen minutes of their nightly phone call detailing how she fell in love with her favorite show—some dark drama he stopped watching three years ago—and why she continued to love it. As soon as Puck said he didn't care for it, he expected her to blow up and tear up his ass in the most verbose way possible. But she didn't. She was learning.

"Nah," he said. "I mean, it was good in the beginning and stuff, but after, like, the second half of the first season, it got real stupid real quick."

"Stu—how did it become _stupid_?!" But there was only so much Rachel Berry could take in one night. He'd predicted her underwear again (pink), made the dirtiest joke about cabinets (oh, yes, _cabinets_—she'd never understand his thinking processes even in a thousand years), made her worry about her veganism if she got carnivorous pregnancy cravings, and had her on the verge of tears when she demanded he sing her the song he was working on. Her emotions had been all over the place already, but he was always there to smooth her—_it_, smooth it—out afterward.

"Like, you get invested in the characters, right? You care about 'em," Puck attempted to explain carefully. "And then the writers keep throwin' 'em in crappy situations to the point of unbelievability."

"But you have to remember they need to create tension in the story line to keep it moving. In order to have tension, there needs to be conflict. Would you like to watch a show where everyone's happy all the time, just hanging out a-a-and _smoking weed_ or something?"

"_That 70's Show_ ran for almost a decade."

"But there was conflict! The relationships between the group kept the show going."

"That's no excuse for having Jackie end up with _Fez_, Berry. You can't save yourself from this. There's a point where TV writers get desperate, and that's when the story goes downhill. Point of no return, baby."

"So what are you saying?"

"All shows need to end at some point. Very few can go on for more than five seasons and still be quality enough to air. Look at fuckin' _Supernatural_! Fourth and fifth season, they had the goddamn Apocalypse—_literally_. There is no going back after the Apocalypse. The whole angel civil war and the leviathan and shit got really annoying, and then after the eighth season with all those godforsaken flashbacks and weird shots, I just stopped watching."

"But there were legions of fans who were just as devoted to the show in the later seasons as there were in the earlier ones," she said. "You wanted the writers to just end the show even though they were still getting good viewership and let down their fans?"

"The writers have a responsibility to the fans, but they also have their responsibility to the characters and to the story they started, you know what I mean? Remember that one show, uh, _How I Met Your Mother_? How many seasons did it take before Ted finally revealed how he fucking met his kids' mother? He took so many fucking years of their lives to tell them. Jesus."

"But the show was still going strong, and the fans were happy. They want to be able to stick with a story for as long as possible because they don't want to let go of their favorite characters. It's like having neighbors become great friends and then they move away. It's horrible."

"But the responsibility to the story ties into the responsibility to the fans 'cause it gets to the point where suspension of belief becomes really fucking insulting."

"This is entertainment, Noah!"

"It's irresponsible, Rachel!" He groaned, completely disgusted that he even knew what he was talking about let alone having the conversation with someone. Those crazy-ass cosplayers and fangirls were like a disease. "Just 'cause people want junk food doesn't mean it's a good thing that needs to keep happening, you know!"

"Where is all this coming from?!"

"Sam!" When in doubt, blame Sam. "He's the one with the smart-ass anthropology and English degrees! But that's beside the point! Some shows just need to end with some dignity. Remember _Fresh Prince of Bel-Air_? That show was the shit, and it ended on a high point. The whole cancelling-shows-only-when-the-viewership-is-down is stupid."

"It's economics!"

"It's irresponsible!"

"This coming from _you_ of all people!"

"I own a business!"

"You _co-own_!"

"I started it and offered Tom the position, Berry! Stop underestimating! Didn't I say I had star potential?!"

Her voice dropped back down into normal decibels. Normal, _worried_ decibels. "Did you have an espresso again? You don't normally talk this much."

"You're rubbing off on me in all the wrong ways, Berry."

"Well, we don't have much of a choice in how we rub together, do we?" Then she gasped like she just realized what she said.

Puck froze. "Yeah, we're totally rubbing off on each other."

Instead of huffing indignantly or sighing in defeat, she laughed, and he smiled, listening to her. When she finally stopped and they lapsed into silence, she hummed something he wasn't familiar with and randomly dropped a question that had him choking on his spit.

"Noah, was this a date?"

_"What?!"_ he spluttered.

"Well, we came home, had dinner, watched a movie on TV, and now we're relaxing together," she said contemplatively, completely nonchalant about what she just said. "I think this technically constitutes as a date."

Puck sat up and rested his elbows on his knees and told her the truth. "Rachel, it's not a date unless the night ends with me kissing you. This is us really us up our minutes to degrees we've never gone before."

"Don't you think it's more than that? I mean, we talk every night about things that I don't even talk about with Kurt and Blaine. Is…_all_ _this_ just me? Am I being presumptuous?"

"No. You're right on track."

"So what now?"

"I don't know."

* * *

The previous strategy of always blaming Sam didn't come out of nowhere, you know. There was legitimate basis for it.

Take right now, for instance. The giant raging headache Puck was dealing with was totally and completely Sam's fault. If you wanna get technical, it was because of this chick Zoey, but this was all Sam's idea, so indirectly, it was _all_ Sam's fault.

Evans had the brilliant idea of going to a goddamn carnival—him, Puck, and Mike. Only it wasn't, like, some fun bro-outing where they could pick up girls or something. No. Sam set up dates. He was with Melanie, Mike was with Janet, and Puck was unfortunately hitched to Zoey.

It was torture.

It was a beautiful day, cool and sunny. There weren't too many people running around, there was a lot of really cool shit happening, and food was good.

But it was torture.

"Sam, we're gonna go over by the bracelet booth, 'kay?" Melanie said, finally releasing her death grip around Sam's arm.

"Ooh! Charms!" Janet squealed excitedly, skipping ahead.

"I wonder if they have any _black_ beads," Zoey said pointedly, throwing a sultry look over at Puck—as if he was supposed to know why black beads were so significant—before sashaying away. But the sway of her ass did nothing but remind him of a horse.

As soon as the three girls were sucked in by the beads, Puck grabbed a fistful of Sam's shirt. His glare could be seen even through his dark, mirrored aviators. "Trouty Mouth, if Zoey claws my ass one more time, I am gonna give you a swirly in an oil vat at one of the funnel cake booths."

"Come on, Puck," Sam said as he deftly ninja'ed his way out of Puck's grasp. "You've been borderline psychotic for the last three weeks, and all of a sudden you dropped this news on us about moving. Can you blame me for wanting to make your last couple of weeks in Chicago fun?"

Puck rolled his eyes. "Do I look like I need help having fun?"

Mike didn't even blink. "Yes."

Puck glared at the both of them as Sam broke out into chuckles. "You two are assholes."

"And _you're_ unstable," Mike said.

Puck groaned loudly. "Can y'all stop with that?! I am _fine_ now!"

"Screw this," Sam said, suddenly latching his hand onto Puck's shoulder and steering him toward a small, purple-colored tent. "If you're not telling us what kind of brain damage you have, we're gonna have to find out through different methods."

Puck balked at the sign next to the tent as he stumbled along between Sam and Mike, who'd quickly caught onto Sam's idea. "A _fortune teller_?! Evans, I thought you were Christian!"

"Sometimes fortune tellers are perceptive enough to pick up on psychological problems through a person's gestures or small nuances in their speech or body language," Sam said. "We can go from her generalizations."

Oh, shit.

He really needed to stop forgetting Sam had a degree and was legitimately _smart_ and not as moronic as he acted sometimes.

Sam and Mike dragged him all the way into the tent, threw some money at a magenta-cloth-swathed Madame Cecilia (a forty-something lady whose skin could be used for making wallets and purses), and slammed Puck down onto the chair at the small, round table with a crystal ball in the middle, right smack in front of Cecilia.

"Hello, boys," she greeted them in a clean American accent.

"Bye, ma'am," Puck said flatly, lurching out of the chair. He was immediately forced back and held down by two pairs of arms. "Okay, throw whatever you got at me. The sooner we're done, the sooner I fry some faces."

"Please," Sam said politely, squeezing Puck's shoulder. "Take your time, ma'am."

She eyed Sam and Mike, standing on either side of Puck like a pair of guards, before dropping her eyes down to Puck. "Sunglasses off, young man."

He pulled them off and set them down on the table, slumping back against the seat with the most disdainful expression he could make—a face he reserved for Finn's shitty-ass pep talks and haters.

She rested a wrinkly hand on her fake-ass crystal ball, but continued to look straight at Puck. It was actually… really creepy.

"You're in love," she said simply. Then she looked down at her crystal ball as Puck, Sam, and Mike gaped at her. She wiped her thumb on the surface, rubbing off a smudge.

Mike burst out laughing. "In _love_?! This idiot?! He doesn't look even remotely close to being in love—he doesn't even have a friend with benefits, let alone a girlfriend!"

Cecilia cocked an eyebrow at Mike and fixed that black-eyed stare on Puck again. Something tickled at the base of his skull and leaned away from her even further. After everything he'd been through in the last few weeks, he wasn't about to take this horseshit lightly anymore.

She wasn't like those other stereotypical fortune tellers who dropped some _ohm_'s and made the table rattle. From the way she just stared at him, with her perfect posture and small, knowing smile, Puck was really believing his previous notion that _someone up yonder_ was meddling with his life in some pretty obvious ways.

"I like her earrings," Cecilia said. "The daisies are very well-made."

Puck nearly threw up on the spot.

When Rachel was eight-years old, she got a jewelry-making kit. They would fill small wires with even smaller beads and then twist them into shapes before hooking them into earrings, necklaces, or rings. It was a small arts-and-crafts sort of thing. But it was a thing that Rachel had hooked him into doing one afternoon at JCC, so he made daisy earrings for Nana Connie. Crazy lady wore those things all the way to her grave.

"You can't understand her right now," Cecilia continued, like she was having a conversation about coffee or something, "but you'll both get the message soon enough. You'll figure it out. You're halfway through forty days, Noah."

* * *

He threw up as soon as he got home. He'd bolted from the tent like a demon outta heaven and tore through the crowds, thanking God, Jesus, Moses, and Methuselah that he brought his car. His was the most badass frantic exit in the history of panic attacks. It was a miracle that he'd made it from the carnival to his apartment 'cause during that entire car trip, he couldn't remember squat. The only thing he thought about was not throwing up on his steering wheel.

After spending a good half an hour in the bathroom resurrecting his lunch, he gargled mouthwash, popped some sleeping pills, staggered back to his bedroom, and passed the fuck out. No way was he staying _conscious_ long enough to even consider the fact that he truly was in an episode of _Supernatural._

Well, it turns out sleeping was not the best idea.

Shocking, right?

Of course not.

_"Noah," Nana Connie called softly. "Noah."_

_ Puck opened his eyes to see he was back at home—in Lima. He stood in the small hallway between the living room and the kitchen, pictures of his small family on either side of the hall. His and Bekah's baby pictures, Ma when she was younger, the three of them in the living room, Poppa Jerry and Nana Connie, and even one of Puck, Bekah, and Jake at Jake's graduation._

_ Puck followed the pictures all the way to the kitchen where Nana Connie stood at the dining table, arranging a bunch of flowers into a vase. That obscenely domestic scene wasn't what had Puck gawping all around him, though. Every available surface of the kitchen—countertop, stove, open cupboards, open dishwasher, oven, sink, chair, and even microwave—was covered in flowers. Roses, gardenias, petunias, tulips, lavender—he was being smothered by plants. They were gonna go all zombified on him, and shit was gonna hit the fa—_

_ "Noah, _bubbala_," Nana called again, waving him over._

_ He tentatively shuffled over and then straightened when she glared at him. He stood up straight and strode over, bending down to kiss her cheek out of pure habit._

_ "Hi, Nana," he said softly, smiling as she patted his cheek._

_"_Shalom_, Noah. _Bo He'na_," she said slowly, pronouncing the syllables and gesturing so he could understand. She waved him closer and tugged him so that he stood beside her._

_Compared to the rest of the kitchen, the dining table wasn't nearly as covered with flowers. Only four different species in varying shades of white, pink, and purple were laid out in front of him in bunches._

_ Nana waved around at all the flowers around them and said one word, clearly enunciated so that he couldn't mishear it: "_Bashert_."_

_ He frowned, the word sounding familiar. He was pretty sure it was the "asher" he'd heard her say the last time she...appeared to him, but he'd heard it before. Heard the term used but definitely not with _flowers_ or anything. _

_ She snapped her fingers, getting his attention again. She sighed at his lost expression and then patted the four bunches of flowers on the table. "_Zvug_."_

_ Okay, that was fairly close to the "boog" he heard, but definitely not as familiar as the other word._

_ "N-Nana, you're not ringing any bells here," he said sadly. "They're all pretty and stuff, but whatever message you're sending isn't getting through."_

_ She took one of each flower, tied them with a purple ribbon she pulled from her pocket, and then handed it to him. "Samuel. Michael."_

_ He blinked at the small bundle. The fuck? "You want me to give that to Sam and Mike? Nana—"_

_ "_Betachbi_," she said, resting her hand over his heart and then moving it over hers. _

And that was how Puck woke up—confused, infuriated, and shocked as all hell that Sam and Mike managed to get into his apartment and wake him up.

"You," Sam growled, "have _so_ much to explain right now."

Puck closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed himself up into a sitting position. "Well, then somebody make me dinner and get me pie and coffee 'cause we're gonna be here for a while."

And so they ordered take-out.

By the time Puck was finished telling them about his dreams, hallucinations, daydreams, and visions, he'd cleared through a full meal of steak, steamed vegetables, and roasted red potatoes and was already on his third slice of pie. Meanwhile, Mike was slumped in his chair with his forehead resting in one hand and a third glass of whiskey in the other. Sam, on the other hand, was pouting with his arms crossed, deep in thought.

"...and then y'all woke me up," Puck concluded, shoving a forkful of pie as added emphasis.

"You sure you've never heard of _basherts_ and _zvugs_, Puck?" Sam asked. "I mean, I _know_ your mom, and I would've thought those two things were...deeply ingrained into your vernacular."

Puck set his fork on his plate, and Mike lifted his head.

"The hell you talkin' about, Evans?"

Samuel Evans had been, still was, and always will be deeply passionate about James Cameron's _Avatar_. He liked it for the characters, for the animation, and for the intricate world that was built for the movie. That deep appreciation led him to delve into the story of culture clashes. Granted, he'd been reminded that the plot for _Avatar_ was essentially the alien version of _Pocahontas_…repeatedly…on a daily basis…for three straight years...by his two "best friends," but that was beside the point. He liked seeing why societies functioned the way they did and what led them to function like that. So he took a couple of anthropology classes along with his general education classes in college. And then became an anthropology major. And then started writing about cultures. And became an English minor. And then wrote and drew his own graphic novel. And became an award-winning artist and writer.

So, you know, he was good at what he did.

And since he had two best friends from very different cultures, he learned a lot about those respective cultures—personally and academically.

Which is why he knew what a _bashert_ and a _zvug_ were.

"A _bashert_ is a Jewish soul mate," Sam said, uncrossing his arms and resting his hands on the table. "I thought your ma would've given you lessons about it ever since you were born or something with the way she—okay, yeah. Um, well, according to certain sources, a person can actually have a lot of _basherts_ in one lifetime. That kind of just generalizes the term into people who are…very compatible with each other. It may be a lot, it may be few, but they're out there."

Puck leaned back in his chair and remembered how Nana waved around the kitchen when she said the word. That must've been what she meant—all those flowers were…_good_ for him. They were…generally people who could spend the rest of his life with.

(He was really starting to get irked that his grandmother was still meddling with his love life even from the grave; it was _insane_.)

"So what are the _zvugs_?" Mike asked.

Sam leaned forward, his elbows on the table as he clasped his hands together. "They're the real deal—they're the actual soul mates that people flip out about, you know? They're the Prince Charming or the…" He glanced and Puck. "…Girl of Your Dreams."

Puck blanched. Fucking _literally_—Girl. Of. His. Dreams.

"And there's only one?" Mike asked.

Sam nodded. "Which is why I'm confused as to why Nana showed Puck four flowers. You can only have one _zvug_."

"No, it makes sense," Puck said, picking up his fork and twirling it between his fingers. "She gave me the makings of a bouquet—it's all for one girl."

Mike frowned. "How do you know that?"

"She tied it with a purple ribbon," Puck said.

Sam cocked his head to the side. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Puck only smirked, thinking of all of Rachel's purple underwear and her grape slushies. "It's gotta do with everything."

* * *

Puck felt like such a geek that night. He _knew_ doing Sam's Comic-Con thing had been the worst possible idea. He had his Bluetooth-thing hooked around his ear while Rachel plunked out the notes of the song she was rehearsing, and his laptop was between his bent legs while print-outs of flowers were scattered _all around him_. They covered his bed, his floor, his desk—you have no idea how hard it is to look for four types of flowers when you don't know their names.

If he'd been researching something legit, he might've felt a little better, but no. He was researching the _flowers_ his dead _Nana_ _Connie_ had showed him in a _dream_. He was _researching_ _flowers_ for a _bouquet_ for _Rachel_ _Berry_.

How had his life gotten to this point?

He'd already finalized plans with Tom, and he'd be moving out the following week. Eric would take over the Chicago store, and he, Jake, Marley, and Callum would work in the new flagship store.

It was the weirdest thing, how much things could change in less than a month. Disturbing, really.

"Noah?"

He blinked and rubbed his dry eyes. "Hmm?"

"Can I ask you something…kind of serious?"

"Since when do you ask permission to ask me stuff?"

"I don't want you to joke around about this," she said. "I want a straight answer, okay?"

"Oh, no…"

"It's not… It's not bad, I promise. It's just—I've been wondering about this for a while now, and I want a black and white answer. I-I need _defined lines_ not blurs and technicalities, okay?"

He leaned back against the headboard. "Okay. Shoot."

"What…" She took a breath. "What are we? What am I to you? Are we friends? Are we more than that? Do you…"

Puck smiled. "We were never friends, Berry. And even today, I wouldn't call us that."

"Then what are we? Exes? Old teammates? Because we've talked every day for the last three weeks, and…"

"What do you want, Rachel?"

"It doesn't matter what I _want_. What matters is what we _are_. How do you define us? How—"

"You don't _define_ people, Berry," he chortled. "Jeez. You can't define relationships either."

"Then what _are_ we?"

"What do you _want_ us to be?"

"I want to be with you," she said simply, and it made him grin like the idiot he was. "Y-You're infuriating, arrogant, inappropriate, and uncouth, and you're also gut-wrenchingly sweet, considerate, insightful, attentive, talented, hysterical, brilliant, and… And I… I'm tired of meeting guys who saw me first for my talent. You—you saw me—"

"As a little, overdressed pixie being attacked by a lunatic squirrel."

She laughed. "Exactly. I feel like…the guys I've dated fell in love with me because of my voice, and while that's a major portion of my life, you're the only one who sees it as more of a side dish than a main course."

"I'm _totally_ rubbing off on you. You're talking in food metaphors."

"Hush. Why do you like me, Noah?"

He shrugged even though she couldn't see him. "'Cause you're crazy. You never want shows or books to end, you drink flavored water, and you owned a pink electric guitar that you never ever played."

"Why else?"

"'Cause you used to dress like a fucking weirdo but you never gave a shit. Remember that one blue suit-thing you once wore to school? I swear to God, I spent that entire day staring at you 'cause I could not figure out why you wore that."

"My wardrobe choices have changed drastically over the years, Noah."

"Well, thank God, 'cause I don't like the idea of you walking around New York City in plaid miniskirts and knee-high socks," he said. "Your food is actually really good too."

"What?"

"I used to steal your food during lunch when you weren't looking. That vegan shit is actually pretty good. Not the best, but edible and enjoyable."

"Thank you!" she said. "You like me for the strangest reasons, but they have nothing to do with my talent."

"Well, I like you for other reasons too."

"Like what?"

"Remember what we talked about in sophomore year? Before we did that 'Run, Joey, Run' shit?"

"Our lack of impulse control and how people saw us?"

"Yeah. I like you because of that too."

"So we've thoroughly established that we like each other because of the people we are now along with the people we were before," she said after a few seconds. "So _what are we_?"

"Well, Berry, what do _you_ think we are?"

"Stop being evasive."

"I'm not being evasive. I'm being a dude who doesn't know what the hell is happening. Answer the question, Miss Black-and-White. What do you think we are?"

She took a few seconds to answer, and a part of him kinda wished he hadn't asked afterward while another part of him couldn't help but smirk.

"We're…Puckleberry."

* * *

**Special thanks go to paceyjwitter of tumblr—she is responsible for the birth of AJ, Andrew Joseph. She wanted Andy Joseph Anderson, actually, but every time I typed out the name, it would up going to "Andynderson" and my fingers wouldn't comply. So it went to "AJ" instead. Regardless, it was her idea to use the mini-Warbler in baby form. **


	3. The Answer

**Thursday, February 14, 2013.  
8:06pm.**

**For Lee.  
Create.**

* * *

**3  
**_**The Answer**_

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who found a ring in a ditch. Yes. A ditch.

Rachel Berry had returned to her hometown of Lima, Ohio on a 3am flight that had her infernal internal clock completely "whacked to hell" as one Noah Puckerman would describe. Her fathers had lovingly laid her in bed once she arrived in her childhood home, and she slept for a good twelve hours. When those twelve hours were up, Rachel deemed it a beautiful enough spring afternoon to venture outside and see what had changed about her old stomping grounds. So she leapt onto her trusty bicycle and rode through the neighborhoods, smiling at new and familiar faces. It was a chance glance that had her spotting the bright gleam in the grassy ditch, and it was the childlike curiosity that had her hopping from the bicycle and bending down to pick up the dirty-but-still-sparkling purple trillion amethyst set into a delicate silver band with leaf-shaped diamonds cradling the gemstone. She immediately had it cleaned and appraised before checking almost all available resources to find someone who'd lost their ring. She refused to announce "FOUND RING!" all over town, of course, because any deplorable liar could saunter forward and claim false ownership only to pawn the ring off for drug money or some such.

No one ever claimed to lose any ring or stepped forward to take it from her, so Rachel kept it. However, she could never bring herself to wear it. She never wore it on her finger, never even wanted to try it, if only because… Well, it felt wrong to wear it when she didn't even know who owned it or if there was some sort of torrid history with it or… It just felt wrong. She strung it onto a silver chain and wore it around her neck.

That was when she began to get little flashbacks of significant moments of her past—all revolving around one Noah Puckerman.

He'd built up a company for himself—shocking considering what he'd intended to do with his life at the end of their senior year. But in retrospect, it made sense. He treated guitars and instruments in general with a reverence reserved for fathers and their newborns (not counting that one time he was on the verge of breaking his guitar over Azimio's head after their "Need You Now" duet, but she'd burst her bubble of pacifism at the same time, so she was in no place to talk). He frequently took care of many of the instruments in the choir room because his grandfather, Jericho "Jerry" Puckerman, had passed down his love of music and its mediums down to his grandson. There was also the fact that Noah had started and maintained his own pool cleaning business, so he already had that under his belt.

Both he and Rachel had risen to very great heights in their extremely young age, and while they didn't run in the same circles, they were in the same general stratum. She was sure he'd heard about her if only because of the tabloids, but he was a constant part of her life even if she wasn't always aware of it. She had a Jericho baby grand in her living room, a Jericho acoustic in her room, and other Jericho instruments in almost every theater she worked in. Ever since she picked up that ring, she would frequently have a dangerously vivid vision of some interaction they had in the past whenever she touched one of his products. It started from their very first meeting and ended with the way he smiled, waved, and made a heart with his fingers as she rode off on the train.

She chalked it up to the nostalgia of her hometown, but then she returned to New York City and that excuse was out the window. Next, she blamed it on the fact that he was on her mind because she remembered it was the anniversary of his Nana Connie's death. She'd planned on calling him and sending him her well-wishes, but then he beat her to the punch of out _nowhere_, thinking she was a hospital. Then he accused her of picking up the phone in the middle of having sex because she sounded so breathless, and that pretty much set the precedent for their subsequent conversations. Okay, that was a lie, it didn't set any precedent, but it certainly raised the bar for how inappropriate he could get.

She hoped that since he was now a constant presence in her life, the flashbacks would stop, and she was right. The _flashbacks_ stopped, but then she began to have even stranger visions of him in the _present_. He'd be writing songs on his couch, giving lessons, driving his car, or even making dinner.

And then one night, he made a comment about _Beauty and the Beast_ that gave her those niggles again. She had a feeling he was having the same plight as her, but then she shook her head of the idea because there was no way she'd ask him about it anyway. He already thought she was a few lines short of a music sheet; he didn't need to know about this…nonsense. He probably wouldn't sever all contact out of some irrational fear that her brand of crazy was contagious, but he definitely might not be as forthcoming with words as he was these days.

Honestly, she'd never heard him say so much in one sitting. She loved their conversations regardless of how he'd diffuse serious topics by saying something crass. He had his opinions and had no qualms laying them out in front of her and calling her out on her own views. They would argue, they would tease, and they would discuss to levels that had her wishing she could sleep the day away until it was time for their phone calls.

He denied their friendship again—a joke, of course—but she'd honestly believed they were friends until she came to the quick conclusion she verbalized: they were Puckleberry. That sent him into a tailspin about "stupid-ass-name-smashing" and theirs being the pinnacle of all smashed names but still not being good enough to be legit. Listening to Noah Puckerman rant was hysterical. She knew how he would react, and she knew he wouldn't like it. However, Rachel knew the truth in that title. They were an entirely different, indefinable entity. They were Puckleberry.

And when she told him that, he agreed to the first part but went off on another tangent about how people always needed some sort of stupid standard for relationships and how much he _really_ didn't like that name. Which was most likely the reason why Rachel was grinning when she stepped out of her building and into the New York City sunshine. Her heels clicked on the sidewalk, an upbeat staccato rhythm that matched her mood. She'd woken up with such a good feeling. She was excited for rehearsal. They were making such good headway, and the rest of the cast was surprisingly kind and welcoming, helping her and giving her pointers and sharing little inside jokes and making new ones. She'd been excited when she'd started a couple of weeks back, but she was suddenly feeling strangely rejuvenated. 6am had her up and ready to be productive and get things _done_!

Her relationship with Noah hadn't been explicitly defined, but she was okay with that. For all intents and purposes, Noah was hers. He'd made it obvious he wasn't seeing other girls and neither was he open to seeing other girls—especially with the way he complained about Sam and Mike trying to meddle in his life as if they'd taken up his mother's torch. Rachel had made it clear she wasn't and wouldn't be seeing other men either despite Kurt and Blaine's happy help and suggestions. They weren't official—understandable considering exclusively dating someone she hadn't seen in nearly a decade and had only talked to via phone was kind of an iffy beginning—but they were already there anyway.

So on that beautiful Saturday, she couldn't be torn down from her high. Rehearsal was a success. Edmund, the director, had been doing this for many years and ran a tight but happy ship with the production. Any obstacles were deftly dodged without any excessive flailing and/or wailing—but a few choice obscenities were unavoidable. The only hitch for the day was during the "Belle" number. She was in the middle of a spin when she gasped and looked down to see a huge gash across her palm—as if she'd accidentally sliced her hand open with a box cutter in the middle of the number.

Thankfully it was a shallow cut, but still enough to have some of the backup dancers screaming. Thinking quickly, Rachel said she'd squeezed her hand too tight in her excitement and opened up a previous cut from the night before. The on-set medic shot her a skeptical look as he bandaged her fresh-looking cut, but since he couldn't exactly come up with a believable reason as to why she suddenly had a cut on her hand when she hadn't even been touching anything, he let it go. Rehearsal went on, but the cut remained on her mind for the rest of the day—until their nightly phone call.

Puck had moved out of Chicago and into his new apartment—the location of which he managed to keep from her through a bizarrely ingenious evasive maneuver that she still hadn't managed to counter—and had accidently cut himself with…yes…a _box cutter._ She didn't say a word about her own hand, only traced the line of the bandage and changed the subject about how Mike and Sam were doing without him.

* * *

The following day was an even more beautiful Sunday, but for some strange reason—which Rachel was beginning to suspect wasn't strange at all—she woke up sore. Sore like she'd been…lifting boxes all day yesterday. She tenderly made her way out into her kitchen and had breakfast, and it was all downhill from there. She had just finished off her oatmeal when waves of pure frustration nearly drowned her on the spot. She dropped her head onto the dark brown quartz counter and groaned, hoping the cool stone would somewhat help her headache.

She was tired, irritated, and so beyond confused. Fortunately, she knew which of these were Noah's and which ones were actually hers, but the fact that she had to worry about that sort of thing began to blur the lines. Thank God she didn't have rehearsal.

She cancelled lunch with Kurt and Blaine—because the good Lord knew she didn't need to subject them to her insanity—and sequestered herself in her room with her laptop, a notebook, and her warm, deep purple comforter. The last month had been pure ridiculousness, and she had no excuse for putting this off as long as she did.

Then she paused in front of Google's main screen. How was she even supposed to search for something like…_this_? What were her keywords? Where was she supposed to start? She'd be better off starting with Web M.D. as her search engine. She rested her hands on her lap and took a deep, steadying breath before she damaged her perfect lavender walls by throwing her laptop at it. Noah's emotions were obscene. After a few more moments to fully ground herself, she began to type.

Her first attempt ("flashback" and "visions") yielded a Wiki Answers page that stated if it wasn't her third eye being activated and helping her see into the _other realms_, then she was either being contacted by her more evolutionary superior self guiding her to fulfill her superhuman potential or it was simply déjà vu. Unfortunately, none of those answers explained her present-time visions or her new empathic connection with Noah.

So she decided in a more specific approach ("extreme empathy") and after countless _Charmed_ fan fiction and depression research links, she found something quite interesting. "_Koev halev"_ was a Hebrew term with no English equivalent but whose definition was along the lines of nearly _literally_ feeling someone else's pain because of the depth of their connection.

And with that realization came the ten-minute reprieve in order to sit and absorb exactly what kind of shitstorm had descended upon her shoulders.

She looked down and fingered the ring hanging around her neck, studying the mysterious fathoms of the amethyst as if there was something dark and evil hidden in it. Like a Horcrux. That would make a hell of a lot more sense than…_this_.

An hour's research saw her in a complete mess. She had found things about _basherts_, and _zvugs_—Jewish soul mates and life-mates—but aside from sparking memories about the prissy little girls back at JCC mooning about finding their one-true-loves, the information was completely irrelevant to the bizarre flashbacks, real-time visions, and strong empathic connection. The odds of any name being called out forty days before a son's birth having any sort of romantic significance was ludicrous. The only thing that seemed _somewhat_ relevant was the fact that forty days after her very first flashback would be her opening night as Belle, which was in less than six days, but even _that_ was a simple coincidence or evidence her math skills needed work.

So she threw her notebook at the wall and screamed because there was something disturbingly wrong with her. And then she froze, her hands over her mouth in shock because the last time she'd thrown _anything_ was when she chucked her hairbrush at Finn back in their senior year. She didn't like throwing things. Throwing things wasn't good for her. Whatever was being thrown didn't normally hit their targets, which meant the high risk for collateral damage. Which is why she didn't throw things.

It was all Noah's fault.

Something was making him frustrated, and because of their…_connection_, she was feeling every bit of that frustration. And if the way things were progressing were going to continue, she needed to intervene. Especially before she started throwing some more things around the house. Good Lord.

She pulled out her phone and texted, _Noah, are you busy?_

_ Not if u count wantin 2 throw some bitches out the window to b 'busy.'_

_ Take a break if you're feeling frustrated then._

_ Nah. M good now. What's up, Berry?_

She sighed, feeling some of her frustration ebb. _Just trying to see if I'm crazy._

_ Coulda told u that yrs ago. Didn't I tell u that yrs ago?_

_ Keep it up, Puckerman. I'm never going to bake you cookies again._

_ Did u make a dirty joke?_

_ No. Literal cookies. And just for that, you dirty-minded oaf, you're really not getting any cookies. Ever._

_ Lies, Berry. 1 day. 1 day, u'r gonna give me cookies._

Rachel rolled her eyes and shook her head, laughing all the same. All right. If this was how she was going to have to go about ensuring she wouldn't be throwing things around, then Noah's lascivious mind would be a small price to pay for her peace. Then she remembered there would never be peace with Noah Puckerman.

And so she resigned herself with that instead.

* * *

Monday ticked onto the clock, and she sat in the dimmed auditorium seats as Gaston and LeFou sang with the other patrons of the bar. Usually, she was either going over her script or paying close attention to the scene. This time, she was sitting there with her arms crossed over her chest, feeling…_ugh_.

She loved Justin and Aaron—Gaston and LeFou, respectively. They teased each other and as soon as she came on, they began to tease _her_ like two younger brothers. It was far too easy to like them and was almost shameful at how quickly one could begin to love them. They were stupendously talented, and they were hitting every note right, every step right. But for some reason, she just could not _deal with this performance._ _Something_ about it was making her frustrated, exasperated, and disdainful—and she couldn't understand why or what it was.

Then she scowled and rubbed her forehead, remembering _their bond_.

Of course. The only other explanation was Puckerman.

It wasn't surprising—of course not. She knew he was a human being who had emotions. She just made the mistake of forgetting how tumultuous those emotions could be. For someone who didn't show much of it, he had ones that packed quite a punch. Still waters ran deep indeed. He needed to calm down, and it was with a very smug smile that she remembered how to do it.

Rachel discreetly pulled out her phone and opened up another text message. It wasn't un-heard of for non-performing cast members to text or make calls when they weren't onstage, but her own policies called for reverence inside the theater.

She supposed that was always what Noah was for—someone to break the rules for and have them _mean_ something.

_How are you today?_

_ Ok._

_ Use your words, Noah. _

_ Dn't we usually wait til pm 2 talk?_

_ We talk on the phone at night. This is only text messaging. Is this a bad time?_

_ No. Just sortin thru sum shit._

_ What's wrong? Do you want to talk about it? Is it about your grandmother?_

_ Wat?! M LITERALLY sortin thru shit! I got comic books in my hands._

_ What are you talking about? Why are you sorting comic books?_

_ Cuz Sam is being Sam._

_ I don't know what that means. I thought Sam was still in Chicago._

_ Not anymore._

_ Elaborate, please. I know you're allotted more characters per text than that._

_ He decided he didn't wanna b left bhind & bout the store rite bside mine. We're neighbors again._

_ Does that bother you?_

_ No. He's my boy. _

_ So what's bothering you?_

_ How do u know smthn's botherin me?_

Oops. _The tone of your texts give off that exasperated vibe. _Yes, good save.

_It's cuz he's makin me help set up the store and sum of these things are ridiculous. U know what yaoi is?_

_ Is that a style of poetry?_

_ Nvrmnd. U'r better off not knowin._

_ They're just comic books, right? Are they really that tiresome to organize?_

_ 85% of these r skinny! N Evans sorts by fandom relation & crossovers r fuckin me up the ass!_

Rachel clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle her giggles and looked around guiltily. No one heard, noticed, or was even paying attention to her, so she turned back to her phone. He'd sent her another text.

_How do I do Marvel/DC crossover wen they're on OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE STORE?!_

_ Noah, please calm down. Just ask Sam, and I'm sure he'll direct you accordingly._

She shook her head, still chortling quietly. His frustration was abating if only because he had someone to rant to and therefore alleviate his exasperations so he was no longer at risk of shredding the comics that were so infuriatingly trying his patience. The anger was melting off and revealing exactly how fond Noah was of Sam. Rachel was fairly sure that the two nimrods would've missed each other something terrible, and so she figured it was in both their best interests that Sam followed him (in a move that shamed all other bromances) to wherever it was that Noah was now. She couldn't speak for Sam, but she knew Noah…_felt_ better.

And in some strange way, she was beginning to feel the same. Not that she was simultaneously happy and frustrated with Sam and his comics, but rather she was happy and frustrated with Noah. She was certainly more than simply _fond_ of him, but the entire situation she had inadvertently found herself caused her the same grief Sam's comic books were causing Puck. On a grander scale, of course.

She didn't know where he was or what he was doing. She didn't know what kind of implications his move would have. They hadn't even talked about visiting each other even though it was practically an unspoken agreement that they were together. All she knew was that this man was…love all bundled up in frustration.

* * *

The following day, she was fairly sure Kurt and Blaine were beginning to feel the same way about her as they sat in a small table in the corner of Starbucks with AJ. All three of them had taken to calling the baby by Puck's nickname—a sign of the formerly-Mohawked man's ridiculously powerful influence. Another sign was the vacant expression on Rachel's face as she smiled down at her tea. Kurt sighed and rolled his eyes while Blaine only smiled and bounced AJ on his knees.

"So Ryan Gosling, Blaine, and I had the most wonderful threesome last night," Kurt said, taking a delicate sip of his coffee. "And then Lady Gaga joined the fray, followed by Britney Spears, Emma Stone, Hugh Jackman, and Jennifer Lawrence. We had the Orgy of Legends, you know."

She could hear him well enough, thank you very much. Ever since they moved in together in her freshman year of NYADA, Kurt had been developing the most creative ways to snap her out of her reveries, and ever since Blaine's reentry into their lives, that creativity began to deviate into a form that followed, if not paralleled, one Noah Puckerman's sense of humor. It wasn't always dirty, but it definitely was ridiculous enough to slap her back into reality.

However, she wasn't zoning out this time. She was very much aware of the tea cradled between her hands, the smooth, varnished wood of the table they'd commandeered, the pleasant hum of business as usual. No, no, she was solidly situated in reality, but that didn't mean she was paying much attention to her friends. Mostly because their conversation was already something she'd long since considered and overanalyzed their topic until it left a strange taste in her mouth. Their topic being Noah.

"Give it up," Blaine said. "Look at her. She's probably reliving whatever phone sex they had last night."

Kurt _tsk_'ed. "I doubt it. Phone sex with Puckerman would bring a smile of ecstasy on her face, not this…grimace of constipation. Oh, wait." He gasped, a hand over his heart. "Don't tell me there're already domestic problems! See, this is why you can't have pretty things, Rachel. You don't know how to get a handle on him."

"And when we say 'handle,' we mean on his di—"

"Okay!" Rachel snapped, waving her arms as if to bat away his words. "Stop right there. Please. Just—enough."

"I'm fairly sure he's got a good handle on his own," Kurt said, drumming his fingers on the table contemplatively.

"Right? It's spring, the season of chino shorts and miniskirts," Blaine said. "And no hetero or anything, but Rachel's got legs that could floor every straight man in here. No matter what pants you could ever advise her to wear, the paparazzi will always manage to get a perfect shot of her ass."

She didn't know whether to feel affronted or flattered. Could both be possible?

"And it's not like Puck's in any shortage of risqué shots of her—those photo shoots would make our old high school tormentors want to bash their own brains in with garlic crushers," Kurt said, ignoring her outburst.

"I prefer they use guitars," Blaine said. "Nothing sounds better than discordant chords on their empty skulls.

"An aria to rival all others," Kurt sighed. Then he zeroed back on Rachel. "So are you done mooning over Puckerman? We didn't set up this lunch so we can watch you stare off into your happily ever after, you know."

Rachel scowled. "I wasn't _mooning. _I was—"

"Smiling faintly at your cup of tea like it had winked and smirked at you before it gave you a compliment wrapped in a dirty joke?" Kurt grinned deviously. "Oh, _no_, you were most definitely not mooning."

Her cheeks burned, but she wasn't about to cede. "Okay, I mooned for less than a minute, but you two just kept going on and on, okay? And besides, we're not here to talk about Noah."

"Really? 'Cause that's pretty much why we called you to have lunch," Blaine said.

Well, at least he didn't lie or beat around the bush.

Rachel rubbed her neck, trying to ease the ache in her chest that had manifested sometime around last night. When she fell asleep. With his deep, even breathing in her ear. And the painful wish that the warmth she felt wasn't her phone's but his.

She sighed and cupped her tea again between her hands again. "You're going to warn me off pursui—"

Kurt scoffed. "No. As if that could make much of a difference with you and Puckerman in the equation—as if we _disapproved_," he added with a wink. "Besides, if we leave you alone, you'll wind up warning yourself off him anyway."

"Can you _blame_ me?!" Rachel blurted out, earning a few cursory glances in their direction. AJ squealed and slapped the table, snapping Rachel out of her haze of panic to clear her throat and lower her voice as best she could. But the frantic twinge kept building anyway. "I mean, _honestly_. W-We may not have the same problems or misgivings as we would've had if we were still in high school, but a lot of the issues from the past lingers, you know? A-A-And there's also the fact that we're nearly a thousand miles apart and haven't seen each other in nine years. Can you see how much problems this has? And what about all the drama that we haven't even touched on but will be there underneath it all, _festering_ like a forgotten onion in the back of a food pantry? The insecurities, the little quirks that we're never going to be able to cope with, the fact that we're still young enough to have a big capacity f-f-for stupidity. This will all come crashing down, and I just—I can't deal with that because _look at me_!" She threw her arms out, eyes wide, ready and burning on her tangent. "It's only been a month and I'm—I'm…acting like it's been forever." She dropped her arms on the table in defeat, and AJ giggled and mimicked her.

Kurt and Blaine exchanged a glance.

"Didn't I say you'd warn yourself off?" Kurt sighed, patting her hand.

"Rachel, we're not trying to make you wary of your potential suitors or anything like that," Blaine said.

"We're not even trying to do anything _at all_," Kurt said.

She wanted to drop her head on the table, but that was unbecoming of anyone, let alone a Broadway star who was set to portray Belle in three days. "Then what are you trying to do?" she asked.

"Well, for one thing, we wanted to keep you from going off on the tangent you had a couple of seconds ago," Kurt said. "Which would've probably won you a few awards if you were on a stage, by the way."

Blaine lifted AJ off his lap and handed him to Kurt before the curly-haired actor leaned forward and gathered Rachel's hands in both his own.

"I'm pretty sure that whatever we say to you about this will fly right over your head," Blaine said.

"And then you'll go back to your apartment or some restroom and pat yourself with wet paper towels to calm down—maybe cry a little too," Kurt added.

"But look at us, honey," Blaine said, redirecting Rachel's attention again. "Trust us when we say that you're going to be absolutely fine. You know why?"

Her trembling lip was his only response.

"Because we know Puck," Kurt said. "And in spite of the fact that he's only a few DNA's short of full _Homo sapien_ sometimes, we know that he _has_ changed since high school—into someone better."

"We talk to Mike and Sam occasionally too," Blaine said, "so we know what he's like even if we're not there to see it. And the fact that those two are his best friends says enough anyway. He's a good guy, Rachel. He's gonna make mistakes, but he won't run away anymore."

"No more ATM-filching or tire slashing," Kurt said. "Okay, he might slash someone's tires if he's pushed far enough—which still isn't very far these days, but the point still stands. He's a good man, Rachel—always was even if he tried to hide it behind his badass, rebellious teenage tendencies. You know what he's done. I'm sure you remember it all even after nine years."

She swallowed and squeezed Blaine's hands, biting the inside of her lip and glancing back and forth between her two best friends.

"We know he'll have some magnificent screw-ups and he'll piss you off 'til you're ready to scream so loud his brain will melt, but Blaine and I know that he's good for you. You're good for each other. You'll make his skin less metallic, and he'll make your big Broadway smiles actually have some emotion behind them."

"And honestly," Blaine said, "I saw this ever since high school. I mean, I know you two dated for, like, a _week_ back in your sophomore year, but there were these weird moments between you two that I thought had some sort of meaning, but Finn was always there to sort of push that way back behind the sidelines. I sailed that ship like Captain Jack Sparrow."

"Oh, my God, I thought we talked about this," Kurt hissed.

Blaine ignored him, but the corner of his mouth turned up in a small smile. "It's been two years since your last steady boyfriend, Rach, and this isn't some new guy who doesn't know all your dirty secrets."

"It's _Puckerman_," Kurt said. "You two have known each other since elementary school."

Rachel smiled a little. They weren't quite _tabula rasa_. They still had the same slate—one that hadn't been cleaned very well, but still sturdy and quality enough to last. They could correct a few things, change some preexisting letters and numbers, take some out, add some in. She figured that was a good thing. Clean slates were overrated.

"And besides," Blaine added with a wink. "You're the good girl, and he's the bad boy. You're the most cliché thing in the world, but it _works_, you know? That's why it's a cliché."

Kurt grinned evilly. "You're _Puckleberry_, damnit."

Rachel finally cracked a full smile and laughed. "I told him that, and he threw a fit. Don't let him hear you say the name."

"Then I will make damn sure to say it whenever he's within hearing distance," Kurt said.

And then her melancholy mood was back. "Whenever that will be."

Kurt and Blaine exchanged another glance. Rachel didn't catch it, though, because her phone suddenly buzzed. Blaine released her hands and she dug her phone out of her pocket to see one new text message.

_U ok, bby?_

And then she _really_ began to think Noah was experiencing the same things as her. _Of course._

_ Liar_.

Yes, he was most definitely experiencing the same thing as her. _How would you know anyway?_

_ Cuz._

_ Noah, that's not a good enough reason._

_ Says who?_

_ Says any sane lawyer._

_ Good thing we're neither of those._

_ That was most legitimate sentence you've ever texted me, did you know that?_

_ Stfu bby u no u lyk dese bttr._

And then she finally grinned, ignoring Kurt and Blaine's scowls or knowing chuckles.

"And we've lost her again," Blaine teased.

"And to _Puck_," Kurt said, resigning himself to this madness for only a few more days.

"Puh! Puh!" AJ smacked, flailing his little arms.

Kurt looked horrified. He lifted AJ so the baby was at eye-level. "No, sweetie—say '_dah_!' Damn it to hell if my child's first words will be that bonehead's name. I'll never live it down."

Rachel leaned back in her chair, grinning at the lightness of her chest. Hopefully it would stay this way for a little while longer.

But of course, she already had her hopes and dreams of Broadway, so it was only cosmically fair for that faint little hope of peace to fade. The next three days were nothing but a blur of nervousness, anticipation, and serious anxiety—and Rachel could not tell which of those feelings were hers even if her life depended on it. She and Noah had taken to calling and texting each other throughout the day, feeling only some semblance of calm when they were in contact, but otherwise, a majority of her hours were spent having what felt like life-threatening palpitations combined with giddiness or slap-happiness.

It was comparable to chugging espresso that had been sweetened with chocolate syrup, milk, sugar, flavored creamer and then chased down with full tumbler of coffee before being let loose in a moon bounce.

She felt like death on crack.

It was the strangest feeling, really—something certainly interesting but hopefully never to be felt again. She was smug and pleased that the rehearsals were going fantastically, anxious about how she'd be received as the new Belle, and anticipatory about actually being onstage in front of a real audience. She wanted to see the faces of the awed children, the nostalgic parents, the fond seniors—she loved watching their expressions. It was what made her keep going; it was her fuel.

But every single one of these feelings were layered—like there was something underneath each one, some different reason that she couldn't quite grasp or even know where to reach for. Noah was feeling very similarly, but she couldn't put a finger on why.

She tried to subtly wheedle it out of him, but he was a stone wall about his emotions—just grumbled about "crazy-ass, motherfucking plans that sounded better in my fucking idiotic head" and how he was going to "may as well shove a knife in an outlet 'cause what in the hell am I thinking." Whatever that meant.

The anxiety progressively worsened the closer they came to Friday's opening night. She practically felt like a wrongly-accused prisoner about to be sentenced to death with only a few more hours to find proof of her innocence. Her fingers were always shaking, and she always had to rub her hands together for warm. Her teeth chattered when it got particularly worse, and her toes vacillated between chilly and frozen. It was only through sheer determination and because of a personal space heater that had her going through rehearsals with the perfection she always aimed to bring. Some of her cast mates were beginning to worry that she was getting the flu.

But Rachel knew better.

No amount of tea, soup, sweaters, and booze could warm her at certain times. She was constantly asking Noah if he felt okay and hoped he wasn't getting sick so she wouldn't feel the effects.

It was really beginning to scare her.

It all came to a head a few minutes before curtain. She stood in the wings, trying to take deep, even breaths and focusing on the feel of her costume, the cakey-ness of makeup, her stiff curls hanging over her shoulder, and the warmth of the phone by her ear.

"Rachel, baby, listen to me, you're gonna be perfect," he said quietly, warmly, in a voice that had her eyes falling shut and thawing her out. "You're gonna stand up there and wow everyone's thongs off the way you did in Sectionals oh-nine. Gonna give everyone goosebumps and tears, and then you're gonna stand there and thank God you're alive and blessed and then _bask_ in your fucking awesomeness 'cause I _know_ that's what you do, sweetheart. You're gonna get out there and break some cold hearts, and they're gonna give you a ten-minute standing ovation, and you're gonna stand there and cry your eyes out at the end 'cause you're on your motherfucking way. You're perfect, so this is gonna be perfect, and it's all perfect. You know that. I know that. The whole world and even Martians know that. This is your night, baby. Make it your night."

Her lip trembled through her grin, knees week, hands shaking, chest bursting. "Noah?"

"Yeah, baby?"

"I love you."

He didn't miss a beat. "I love you too. Kick this play's ass."

"I will."

She handed her phone to Kurt, who looked like he didn't know whether to cry, laugh, or roll his eyes. Then she took one more deep breath and stepped out onto the stage.

* * *

Noah was right, of course. She cried—big, baby, weepy tears—as she and the cast walked out to bow, hand in hand. The applause thundered through the theater, whoops and cheers that made her chest rattle along with her choked sobs. Throughout the entire play, every thought of fear, nervousness, and insecurity were banished from her mind as a blaze of hot pride burned inside her, and she knew without any doubt that it was Noah. Even if he couldn't be there to see her, he was proud of her.

The words had just slipped out of her mouth, and while it may have seemed like a heat of the moment declaration, the relief she felt after finally admitting it made it ring true. She loved the idiot, the screw-up, the musician, the badass, the letch, the _man_. They may have only reconnected a month and a week ago, but it didn't matter. The candle had always been there, ready to light. And while there had always been a fear of an unreciprocated declaration of love, at that moment, she knew he loved her even before he'd said it. She'd felt it; she just _knew_.

And she'd never had such a happier night.

Artie had arrived in New York City first—an early flight from London—followed by Quinn, who'd flown in from Paris. Sugar and Rory flew in from Dublin with Tina, who'd come from Melbourne. Burt and Carole flew in from DC. Will, Emma, Coaches Bieste and Sylvester, and Noah's ma rode the train in from Lima along with Hiram and Leroy Berry. Bekah, Puck's little sister, even took a flight from Orlando. Dave Karofsky made a surprise appearance from San Francisco since he had a business meeting on this side of the country. Brittany, Santana, and Mercedes were the last to arrive from Los Angeles. The amount of sound made backstage as they all bum-rushed each other was _ridiculous_. Finn would be flying in from Vancouver, followed by Matt from Texas and Beth and Shelby from Sacramento the following night—they sent their early congratulations to Rachel and promised to see her at the end of her next show.

Everyone was screaming and congratulating and smothering her with hugs and snarky-but-sweet comments that had her right back in the choir room. Sue complained about everything under the moon and sun, but she managed a very proud, backhanded compliment that made Rachel hug her regardless.

The ecstatic lead actress finally managed to extricate herself from the plethora of hugs being thrown about backstage to make it to her dressing room. She pushed the door open and stumbled back a step with a squeak, nearly tripping over her wide yellow skirt.

Every available surface was laden with bouquets and vases of the same four flowers in varying shades of pink and white: amaryllis, myrtle, bouvardia, and gladiolus. And she nearly had a heart attack because _she had never told anyone this._

Rachel Berry had been very big on flowers. She loved getting them, of course—roses, carnations, tulips, peonies—and she wasn't picky about which ones she wanted to receive. But there was a time when she was between shows, when she was bored enough to go online and research flowers and their various meanings, that she ended with her four favorite blossoms—the very same blossoms that sat in her dressing room. The very same blossoms that she had never bothered to tell anyone about. She loved them more for how they looked rather than their meanings, but when she saw that each bouquet was tied with a wide, purple ribbon, the story of the four flowers snapped to her mind.

Amaryllis for pride, myrtle for Hebrew marriage, bouvardia for enthusiasm, and gladiolus for remembrance and strength of character.

"KURT!" she screeched, and he immediately rushed up behind her and gasped, mouth wide open in shock.

"What in the he—"

"My phone, Kurt—_phone_! Where's my phone?! I have to call…" She snatched it out of his hand as soon as it appeared from his pocket and stabbed the screen to call Noah. "Pick up. Pick up. Pick up. _Pick up!_"

He didn't pick up.

Still breathing as if she'd run five marathons, she lowered her phone and surveyed the small room, tears blurring her vision because that _freaking idiot_.

"You're both so ridiculous," Kurt breathed, finally rolling his eyes and shaking his head in spite of the sentimental tears on his cheeks. "_So_ ridiculous."

Rachel laughed thickly and dialed another number, hoping to have better luck.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Mike," she said, sniffling.

"Rachel! Hey! How was the show?"

She swallowed the lump in her throat. "Great—it was… It was great."

"So why do you sound like everyone walked out after the first number?" Mike asked, his tone immediately going from happy to worried.

"Um, Mike, is Noah with you?" she asked, sniffling again.

"Not right now, Rach. Sorry. He's busy setting something up—a gig tonight," Mike said. "He'll call you back as soon as he can though."

"Can you just… Can you tell him 'thank you' for the flowers?"

Mike snickered. "You can tell him that yourself later, okay, Berry? Listen, I gotta go—I'm up on keyboard tonight. We'll talk again soon, okay?"

"Promise, Michael Chang?"

"I promise, Rachel Berry."

She grinned, said goodbye, hung up, and then turned to face Kurt.

"If you bring these to your apartment, you're going to have allergies until kingdom come," he said flatly.

"Then can you be a good friend and buy me two boxes of Claritin?" she asked sweetly.

Sure enough, she arrived at her apartment with fifty bouquets, two boxes of Claritin, and a weariness that soaked all the way into her bones. She figured it was the crash after that sugar/caffeine-rush feeling she'd had for the past couple of days. Their little glee club reunion would resume celebrations the following night when the others arrived, so they let Rachel go home easily enough. Kurt, Blaine, Brody, Justin, and Aaron had helped her carry everything up and arrange her flowers before quickly exiting.

She frowned at their sudden departure for a few seconds, and then shrugged it off. She could ponder their bizarre behavior after she'd taken a quick shower and changed into something infinitely more comfortable—preferably one blue-and-white button-up shirt, some yoga shorts, and a pair of pink knee-high socks with monkeys faces all over them.

She'd give him Puckerman half hour before barraging his cell phone with texts and voicemails demanding he call her back immediately. One more half hour 'til she could fully relax.

However as soon as she stepped into the shower, a feeling of acute nervousness and anxiety began to fester again, making her fingers cold, her heartbeat quicken, and her stomach bottom out. She tried to let the hot water wash it away, but no matter what she tried, she couldn't get rid of the feeling. Yoga breathing, a slap to the face, scales—she nearly tried masturbation, but she barely even thought through half the word before immediately deciding against it.

At first, she thought it was worry that something had happened to Noah that caused him to not be able to pick up his phone, but then she shook her head, remembering that Mike said he was busy setting up for some "gig." And so she concluded that it was _Noah_ who was feeling nervous and anxious. But he wouldn't pick up the damn phone so she could alleviate some of his issues, so all she could do was grumble and growl her way around the bathroom, wishing this _koev halev_-nonsense would end soon.

She finally decided a cup of tea and some fresh air out on her balcony wouldn't hurt, but when she opened the doors, rested her mug on the twisted iron railing, and looked down at the atrium below, she nearly dropped her tea because _holy fucking shit, what in the hell was happening_?

* * *

He was…crazy. That was the only explanation.

That was the reason why he wasn't Finn's biggest fan in their later high school years. Finn had gone absolutely batshit over some high school romance. What right-minded dude wanted to hang around another dude whose biggest problem was a high school marriage? Priorities, man. Finn was crazy.

And now, so was Puck, but the biggest difference was that he made crazy look _damn good_.

His deep red formal button-up was rolled at the sleeves, skinny black tie slightly loosened at his collar. Shiny shoes, pressed pants, and cleanly-shaven hair—he'd had girls and ladies winking and smiling at him all night. Sam, Mike, Callum, Jake, and Marley looked decent too, but they were negligible.

They _had_ to dress up, though. You don't go to a Broadway show without cleaning up. And this kind of stunt had to be handled with a certain amount of finesse.

So there he was, holding his electric guitar, Mike on the keyboard, Sam on acoustic, Callum on bass, and Jake on drums. Callum was Puck's employee, so he _had_ to do this, Jake was his little bro to whom Puck gave a job while he was searching for his big break, and Marley was there because of Jake, so she just sat at one of the patio tables with a tambourine. Mike and Sam _naturally_ wanted a part, so they were there—if only to make sure Puck didn't fuck up too much in front of…_everyone_, apparently.

When he'd called up the old glee phone tree, he _genuinely_ didn't think they still cared enough to drop everything and shag ass to New York City. Hiram and Leroy, _yeah_, of course—they were already planning on coming anyway. But everyone else was just…_ Jesus._ Okay, yeah, Matt, Finn, Shelby, and Beth were gonna be late to the party, but _still_. Even Jackass St. Douchebag found out and was planning to fly in from Carmel for tomorrow night's showing. The fact that they all were coming was crazy.

Which brought him back to the fact that he was, indeed, _cray-cray. _

He was standing in the grass, next to a goddamn _fountain_, surrounded by flowerbeds and feeble little trees, with a wooden archway decorated with fairly lights, some wrought-iron and wooden benches, and a few patio tables—_ready to serenade a girl. _

He was about to have a heart attack, a panic attack, and an aneurism all at the same time.

And then her balcony doors opened, and she came out with her little cup of what could only be tea since she hardly ever drank anything else. She was dressed in the same blue-and-white shirt she'd never given back, black shorts, and a pair of fuckin' adorable knee socks, and he felt literally _all_ of his blood just stop because it was like it forgot where to go.

_Oh, shit_, he thought.

Then she looked down and had the same biologically impossible triple-reaction that almost had her mug falling out of her hands. In that same split second that their eyes locked, Sam strummed the first chord.

And then Puck began to sing.

_"I remember what you wore on the first day. You came into my life, and I thought, 'Hey, you know, this could be something.'"_

Jake hit a steady bass and sang with Mike, their voices melding into a deep baritenor. _"This time, this place, misused, mistakes. Too long, too late, who was I to make you wait?"_

Sam came in, his song weaving with Puck and Mike and Jake's in a slow, even melody. _"Time stands still."_

_ "'Cause everything you do and words you say, you know that it all takes my breath away."_

_"Beauty, you know she is."_

_"And now I'm left with nothing."_

_ "Just one chance, just one breath—"_

_ "I will be brave."_

_ "—just in case there's just one left."_

_ "So maybe it's true that I can't live without you."_

_ "I will not let anything take away…"_

_ "And maybe two is better than one."_

_ "…what's standing in front of me._

_ "'Cause you know, you know, you know—"_

_ "But there's so much time to figure out the rest of my life, and you've already got me coming undone."_

_ "Every breath…"_

_ "And I'm thinking two is better than one."_

_ "…every hour has come to this."_

_ "I wanted, I wanted you to stay—"_

_ "One step closer."_

_ "I remember every look upon your face, the way you roll your eyes, the way you taste. You make it hard for breathing."_

_ "—'cause I needed, I need to hear you say—"_

_ "I have died every day waiting for you."_

_ "'Cause when I close my eyes and drift away, I think of you and everything's okay."_

_ "Darling, don't be afraid."_

_ "I'm finally now believing."_

_ "—that I love you—"_

_ "I have loved you for a thousand years."_

_ "—I have loved you all along, and I forgive you—"_

_ "That maybe it's true that I can't live without you."_

_ "I'll love you for a thousand more."_

_ "And maybe two is better than one."_

_ "—for being away for far too long. So keep breathing—"_

_ "And all along I believed…"_

_ "—'cause I'm not leaving you anymore."_

_ "…I would find you."_

_ "Believe it."_

_ "But there's so much time to figure out the rest of my life, and you've already got me coming undone."_

_ "Hold on to me and never let me go."_

_ "Time has brought your heart to me."_

_ "Keep breathing 'cause I'm not leaving you anymore."_

_ "I have loved you…"_

_ "And I'm thinking two is better than one. And I'm thinking, ooh, I can't live with you 'cause, baby, two is better than one."_

_ "…for a thousand years."_

_ "Believe it, hold on to me and never let me go."_

_ "There's so much time to figure out the rest of my life, but I've figured out when all is said and done."_

_ "I'll love you for a thousand more."_

_ "Two is better than one."_

Rachel's neighbors had come out onto their own balconies or stood at their back doors, swaying and smiling at the most crazy-ass mash-up ever attempted. The former gleeks, their parents, their teachers, coaches, guidance counselor, classmates, children, and siblings stood under the garden entrance and had tears in their eyes the song tapered off.

But Puck and Rachel had zeroed in on each other and weren't in any rush to change that. Rachel had slowly transitioned out of her completely dumbstruck shock to make her way down the adjacent fire escape until she stood in front of Puck and his little makeshift band, tears still streaking down her face. Puck watched her—every move, every expression, every breath—like his life depended on it. And when she'd come to a stop in front of him—in her sleepwear and fluffy slippers—he was surprised he still had enough breath to keep singing.

He wasn't singing anymore, though. But she was still crying through the gigantic smile that made every part of his body thrum with energy.

"Christina Perri, Noah?" she asked as audibly as she could through her disbelief and tears. "Mashed up with Nickelback and a Boys Like Girls-Taylor Swift collaboration? _Really_?"

He shrugged, pulled off his guitar to hand it to Sam, and then shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from grabbing her face and kissing her. He figured this whole talking thing should come before the kissing so they wouldn't have to get derailed later. "You hummed those all the time senior year—when you were busy doing stuff at your locker or organizing our sheet music in the choir room."

She let out a shocked breath, still grinning like a maniac. "How could you_ possibly_ have noticed that?"

He grinned and reached out to push a lock of her hair behind her ear. "Same way I knew your favorite slushie flavor was grape, baby."

"Oh, God," she breathed, reaching up to hold his hand and lean into his touch. "Why didn't you tell me you were in New York?"

He stepped closer and cupped her face in his hands, brushing away the streaks of tears with his thumbs. She felt unreal. He was dreaming. "'Cause I wanted to surprise you," he said. "Duh."

"I thought you were moving further away from me," she said quietly, squeezing his hand. "I _genuinely_ thought you'd moved to Los Angeles o-o-or Las Vegas or someplace. I can't believe you're _here_."

He grinned and leaned down so their foreheads were pressed together. "I told you I love you. If I'm not in the immediate vicinity and have plans to move somewhere, I'd sure as death and taxes do damn near anything to move closer. You should've known that, dummy."

She choked out a laugh, and he smelled the minty twinge of peppermint tea. She shook her head and released his hand to wrap her arms around his waist, pulling them closer together. "You're really here?"

He sighed at the contact—she was so fucking warm and small and soft and gorgeous and _there_, and he never acutely felt her absence than when she was pressed right up against him. Never know what you're missing 'til you've got it.

"Yeah. And I _really_ just sang you a mash-up of three dumbass songs," he said. "One of which I had to borrow from Jake and Marley since they already called dibs on it before."

She laughed louder this time, sparing a glance at her _boyfriend's_ younger brother and his fiancée. "Did you say thank you?"

Puck snorted and rolled his eyes, one hand trailing down to cup her neck "Of course. There _is _a song code, Berry. We gotta stick to the co—" His pinkie finger brushed the silver chain around her neck, and he slowly pulled out the necklace.

And nearly had another fucking heart attack.

"Noah?" Rachel asked, her eyes flitting from his face and then down to the ring between his fingers. "Are you okay?"

"B-Berry, this…is my nana's engagement ring," he rasped, staring at the bright amethyst between the two diamonds. "We… When she died, we couldn't find it. Thought it fell in the sink pipe or got lost in the move or some shit—how did you find it?" He looked up and saw her clear expression of understanding.

"I found it on the side of the road when I visited Dad and Daddy last month. I tried to find reports of lost or stolen rings, but nothing matched its description. So I kept it," she said. Then she scrunched up her face seriously. "Noah, has anything…_strange_ happened to you around the middle of last month?"

Holy shit.

"Did you…_see_ things?" he asked.

She nodded and tapped the ring. "I think it's because of this."

And he had to agree.

Nana Connie. Shipping and meddling even from the grave.

"For God's sake, kiss already!" Santana shrieked.

"Shut up, Satan!" Puck called back.

Rachel threw her head back and laughed, and Puck grinned, watching her. They could talk about the technicalities of their supernatural experience some other time. 'Cause right now? God, Satan, and his Nana Connie were sending him some very clear messages.

He let the ring drop back down against her neck—she could keep it. He was meant to have it for his own fiancée, so he'd steal it in a couple months to propose properly. But for the time being, it was in its rightful place anyway. Then he stroked her hair back from her face.

"I love you," he—his heart, his brain, his stomach, his fucking _fingernails_—said, his lips brushing hers gently.

"I love you too," she replied.

And then she kissed him.

It wasn't a beginning or an ending, really. They all went back up to Rachel's apartment and teased her about how all of them knew about Puck's plan. Then Artie pointed at the four different cameras he'd positioned to preserve the performance and their kiss, promising to edit and refine it for their inevitable wedding reception. Aviva cried all night, and Bekah did her best to try and keep her from smothering her big brother and/or his girlfriend. Brittany announced that she'd known it all along, and Santana supported her as best she could—even through the cat premonitions and the talking daisies.

Puck eventually proposed onstage at curtain call one night, after stealing back his nana's ring, donning the Beast's costume, scaring the bejesus out of Rachel, having her pull off the fake head, and then dropping down on one knee amidst screams and squeals of the audience. She married him beside the lake in Lima, Ohio and held the reception in a nearby field, out in the open where they danced their first dance under the stars and to Mike's rendition of "Have I Told You Lately," the crickets chirping with the music.

They had three kids—Jonathan, Isaiah, and Caroline—who drove them up the wall, across the ceiling, through the window, and out into the vast open spaces of insanity. But that was what love was, right? Insanity. They argued and drove each other bonkers, had screaming matches until they were hoarse, but through it all, they never stopped being so insanely in love with each other. The way he'd cook for her, the way she'd shave his hair; the way he held her hand, the way she kissed his temple; the way they always walked together, her arm linked through his; the way they made love.

Though what nudged them together wasn't natural, their relationship was. No one dictated what they should talk about, made them do the things they did, or pushed them to say the things they said. There wasn't any standard either of them were trying to live up to, no perfect fairy tale to achieve. They brought only themselves to the table, ready and willing for whatever shenanigans life would chuck in their faces. And together, they kicked whatever obstacles they encountered in the ass because that's what they did. They'd bring it and kick ass because they were Puck and Rachel, Berry and Puckerman, Crazy Berry and the Puckasaurus, _Puckleberry_.

So, in actuality, they _did_ live happily ever after. And their good times had never seemed so good.

* * *

**The End**

* * *

**There are people that come into your life and leave an indelible mark. Just because they're fictional doesn't make them any less important. I came into the bubble because, like many others, I saw the chemistry. I stayed in the bubble because, like many others, I fell in love. I fell in love with the characters, with the fantastic, passionate, and genuinely kind-hearted people in the bubble, and the way these two characters played off each other so well in the show, in fanfiction, in the damned Photoshop graphics. Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan, and Brad Falchuk unintentionally wrote one of the most epic **_**could-have-been**_** love stories.**

**But the fact of the matter is that it hurts. It hurts when you want something so much that everywhere you look, you're reminded of them. Puckleberry didn't change my life because it gripped me tight and threw me into perdition (**_**aka Glee**_**). It's because while there are ships that you look at and see two people who have fantastic chemistry, there are also ships that you look at and find a part of yourself.**

**Because Puckleberry is not just about two hot Jews.  
It's not about a good girl and a bad boy.**

**It's about redemption. It's about realizing you're so much better than you thought you could be. It's about being the best you can be, about working your hardest, about reaching for your dreams. It's about wanting something so much it hurts. It's about shared pain, shared hopes, shared disappointment, shared dreams, shared fears. It's about understanding. It's about realizing that beauty is found in pure, untainted nature. It's unexpected, it's uncontrollable, it's painful, it's perfect.**

**Puckleberry is about love.  
Love in grape slushies and "Sweet Caroline"—the kind of love that we should strive for. Love so deep that (to borrow from **_**Castle **_**a bit) all the songs make sense. A love that isn't forced or based on fantasy but rather on what's here and now. What's right in front of you, what's **_**real**_**. Puckleberry showed me that love is a balm, not a crutch. It's a slow burn, not a blaze of heat—it's not superficial, it soaks in all the way to your bones. It's about a taut guitar string in the calm, not a riff of chords in a crowded auditorium. It's about loving yourself before focusing all your attention on someone else. **

**It's love at its core.  
It's **_**natural**_**.**

**Only then can it be earthquakes, riptides, and waves; wind, thunder, and lightning; comets and supernovas.**

**So this is my declaration of love, my pledge of allegiance, my promise of my heart, my thank you to the bubble and to this ship. Thank you for helping me grow as a writer, a reader, and a person. Thank you for the comfort at a quarter after one, for the good times that never seemed so good.**

**I love all of you from the very depths of my soul.**

_**Ashley**_


End file.
